Abengoa is developing biorefinery technologies for converting a wide range of biomass feedstock into ethanol. The feedstock includes agricultural residues, wood residues, and potential energy crops such as switchgrass and poplar. This approach enables Abengoa Biorefinery Technologies to be deployed across wide geographical areas.
Process development has been carried out at our 1 ton/day integrated pilot plant (York, NE) since 2007. Main activities focus on optimization of key unit operations to improve the overall process economics. These include: more effective pretreatment, improving enzymatic hydrolysis yield with lower enzyme usage, improving ethanol yield especially from pentose sugars, and co-products development.
Scale up and process validation at our 5 million liters/y commercial demonstration plant (Salamanca, Spain) started in 2009. This plant has operated for more than 5,500 hours to date. The first phase of operation focuses on testing various commercial enzymes and Abengoa enzymes. The next phase of operation will include pentose fermentation.
Abengoa is developing a 25 million gallons per year biomass ethanol plant using enzymatic hydrolysis technology in Hugoton, Kansas. Construction will begin this year.
We acknowledge ongoing support from the US Department of Energy and the European Commission through their various programs. The York Pilot Plant R&D project and the Hugoton, KS commercialization project received financial support from the USDOE. The Salamanca project received grant from the European Commission’s 5th Framework Program.
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