The major technical barriers to producing sustainable and cost-competitive bioethanol from lignocellulose lie in the high costs of saccharification. The objective of this WP is to trial a range of new processes that involve added-value product extraction as partial pretreatments for enzymic saccharification in order to add value to the overall process and decrease saccharification costs. Data from WP5 and 6 will be used to develop integrated process systems to obtain maximal value from lignocellulose. This will involve iterated combinations of data generated in piloting activities and in-silico modelling to predict optimal ways forward. Pilot and demonstration facilities are available through partners in Europe and Brazil. We will generate experimental data for integrating added-value products extraction with cellulosic ethanol production as well as pyrolysis of any residual material, and this will help in the LCA analyses in WP8.

WP7 Leader: Prof Phillip Wright (11 University of Sheffield, UK)