Bioethanol |
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Ethanol fermented from biomass is known in the industry as BioEthanol.
BioEthanol is highly desirable not only because of its energy content, but also because it is considered the most promising carbon-neutral form of transportation fuel on the energy horizon. Together, top sources of biomass could yield enough BioEthanol to meet at least 50% of current US fuel needs. Presently, BioEthanol is uneconomically expensive to produce. The first step in the process involves breaking the long chains of cellulose and other plant cell polymers into glucose and other fermentable sugars. Cellulose, however, is resistant to processing and thus currently requires expensive, high-energy, and in some cases caustic, methods to release the constituent sugars. Through unique intellectual property developed at the University of Maryland and licensed exclusively to the company, Zymetis is developing revolutionary pretreatment methods for releasing fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass. |