Enzyme Technology 

General Biomass Company develops hydrolytic enzymes to convert biomass to next-generation biofuels and bioplastics. Our enzymes make glucose and xylose from biomass. Glucose from cellulose and xylose from hemicellulose are the core feedstocks for nextgen biofuels and bioplastics.

Cellobiohydrolase image from Pfam

Enzyme Development: the Key to Sustainable Biofuels 

A sustainable world requires the development of low-cost, affordable, and portable supplies of renewable energy. These energy sources must be widely distributed, and connected with local jobs and infrastructure.

Liquid biofuels produced from biomass have a number of inherent advantages. They are relatively safe, cheap, easily storable, transportable with minimal changes in infrastructure, and are adaptable to jet turbines, internal combustion engines and biofuel/electric hybrids. They can power jet aircraft, trucks and trains, in addition to automobiles. With suitable development and feedstocks, they can largely replace fossil fuels derived from oil.

The replacement of oil must be both a national and international priority. Most immediately, the price of oil will drain capital and resources from the United States and increase its debt, and divert meager resources from development and food in developing countries. Based on price alone, oil will quickly become unsustainable. When oil is in the $100-150 range per barrel, the U.S. oil trade deficit alone is 1-2 billion dollars every single day. This is a massive loss of capital which might otherwise be used to fund schools, health, and a new energy and materials infrastructure to replace the obsolete structure based on petroleum.

Close on the heels of increased oil costs are the many human problems caused by global warming. Droughts, flooding, loss of food and water supplies, environmental refugees, and the many opportunities for conflict over water and land are the inevitable consequences of a warming world. Biomass feedstocks come from green plants which absorb CO2 from the air during photosynthesis driven by solar energy. The total amount of living green plants is so large that CO2 oscillations from annual plant growth cycles are visible in the rising CO2 records collected at Mauna Loa.

The key role of enzymes

Current methods for converting biomass to biofuels fall into two basic groups, thermal and enzymatic. The most viable thermal methods involve gasification of biomass at high temperatures (~1000 deg C), producing a syngas consisting of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane, which can then be reformed into a liquid fuel like ethanol by either fermentation or chemical catalysts. These methods have the advantages of speed and feedstock neutrality, but the disadvantages of high capital cost and lack of product flexibility.

In contrast, enzymatic methods, while slower, have the advantage that they preserve the original glucose molecules made by photosynthesis, and with appropriate technology will have lower capital costs and ease of use. Additionally, enzymatic methods preserve and make available the two other biomass components, xylan and lignin. Xylans can be hydrolyzed by our enzymes to yield xylose, raising the total sugar output from biomass by 50%. Lignin can either be burned as a substitute for coal, or converted to high value chemicals for adhesives, fuel additives, and carbon fibers for light-weight composites.

Enzymatic methods require the application of sophisticated biotechnology for their development, but once developed are relatively easy to produce and use with minimal energy and capital inputs. Their principal product, glucose, is at the core of all cellular metabolism, and is thus a feedstock for most industrial fermentations producing biofuels and bioplastics. In effect, glucose is the new oil, but based on local sources, creating local jobs, and contributing far less to global warming. It is not accidental that glucose is also a principal structural component of wood, grass and other forms of biomass, since these cellulosic structures form the basis of the food chain for all living organisms.

Because of this central dual role of glucose, as both a structural and a food molecule, it is not surprising that enzymes which convert cellulose to glucose have evolved thousands of times, and are found in a wide variety of organisms from bacteria to termites to shipworms. Our technology enables the production of the best enzymes, optimized for research and industrial needs.

General Biomass is developing cellulase enzymes which convert cellulose to glucose, and a variety of accessory enzymes to optimize the production of biosugars from biomass. Biosugars from nonfood biomass are the new raw materials for cellulosic ethanol, biojetfuel, green diesel, green gasoline and bioplastics.

Please contact us with your needs.

Copyright ©2011 by General Biomass Company. All Rights Reserved.