Improved Ethanol Production

The production of ethanol as a first stage liquid energy carrier will be improved by developing a process based on gentle pre-treatment in combination with optimised enzyme mixtures for full hydrolysis of sugar polymers to monomers, and further converting to ethanol at minimum 4% end concentration. C6 sugars (glucose and mannose) will be fermented by yeast and other sugars by thermophile bacteria, at an efficiency of at least 90%. For the production of ABE (Acetone, Butanol, Ethanol), MacroFuels aims for the conversion of 90% of all the sugars to liquid biofuels using microbial strains able to degrade and ferment the sugar polymers, eliminating the need to use enzymes in pre-treatment.