Biomass Deconstruction and Pretreatment

Our mission is to transform lignocellulose into intermediate streams with low toxicity, high sugar concentrations, and utilizable lignin for biological and thermochemical upgrading to fuels and products with minimal waste generation and material and energy use.

A photo of a meadow and forest and jet airplane in the sky in the background covered by illustrations of white and grey molecular structures leading to a fuel nozzle with yellow liquid fuel and white molecular structures coming out of the nozzle.

Jet fuel range alkyl di-aryl aromatic and alkyl di-cyclohexane hydrocarbons were produced by noble metal and acid zeoloite catalytic upgrading of biomass-derived lignin waste streams from the NREL-developed deacetylation and mechanical refining (DMR) process.

Image of the cover of the March 2015 issue of the Chemistry and Sustainability journal, showing an illustration of a car driving down a country road into the sunset that leads to Renewable Energy Storage.

High surface area nanoporous carbons for supercapacitor electrodes derived from NREL's novel deacetylation and mechanical refining (DMR) lignin could revolutionize electrical energy storage for transportation and grid demand management and load leveling.

Illustrated diagram showing NREL's deacetylation followed by mechanical refining process. The left side shows biomass feedstock (represented by brown spheres and circles) going in to an Atmospheric Deacetylation Reactor with liquid Lignin coming out one side that can be catalytically upgraded to jet fuel and feedstock solids coming out the other side that go into a DDR Primary Disc Refiner to be refined and then into a DDR-SM Secondary Szego Mill to be further refined. The feedstock then goes into a High Solids Enzymatic Digester and then into High Solids Fermentation where it produces Fuel/Chemical Products or Lignin for Conversion to Advanced Biofuels and Chemicals.

Combined monomeric sugar concentrations greater than 230 g/L and fermentation ethanol concentrations greater than 10% v/v were observed for enzymatically hydrolyzed deacetylation and mechanically refined (DMR) corn stover without hydrolyzate purification or concentration.

Full Publications List

Photo of a 200 kg/day Small Horizontal Reactor in an industrial plant setting. It is the smallest of four continuous chemical pretreatment reactors and is used for piloting to the larger throughput systems. A man in a hardhat and safety glasses stands to the right the reactor.

Chemical Deconstruction

We develop alkali, acid, and oxidative-based chemical deconstruction processes that result in intermediate streams tailored to specific biochemical and catalytic upgrading strategies.

Mechanical Deconstruction

Integrated chemical and mechanical deconstruction strategies, such as the NREL deacetylation and mechanical refining (DMR) process, result in low-toxicity, high-concentration sugar streams and native-like lignin following enzymatic hydrolysis.

Photo of an interior view of a shiny, large mixer.

Enzymatic Deconstruction

After chemical and/or mechanical deconstruction, an enzymatic hydrolysis is performed to convert biomass polysaccharides into their monomeric sub-units for biological fermentation and/or catalytic upgrading.