What is the difference between Enerkems process and other processes for producing cellulosic ethanol or second-generation fuels?
Second-generation fuel-production technologies can generally be divided into two types: • Enzymatic (or biological) technologies; • Thermo-chemical technologies. 1- Enzymatic (biological) technologies: Enzymatic technologies seek to recover and ferment sugars that are found in lignocellulosic (tree and plant) materials. These technologies target forest biomass, particularly less-costly forestry residues, including those produced by saw and paper mills. The challenge of this approach is its ability to recover sugars in these lignocellulosic materials. The sugars are “imprisoned” in complex structures (presence of crystals and lignin, etc.) and it is hard to break down these lignocellulosic materials since nature engineered them to last (which is exactly why we use wood to build houses and other things that we want to last). These technologies aim at recovering the sugars using engineered enzymes to break down the tree and plant material, after which it is possible to hydrolyze the cellu
