Iogen's process for producing ethanol from cellulosic biomass

The production of fuel alcohol from cellulosic biomass is of growing interest around the world. Cellulosic biomass can be used to produce transportation fuel, with the overall process having little net production of greenhouse gases. Biomass is available as a byproduct of many industrial processes and agricultural materials, or can be potentially produced from dedicated energy crops. The technology for biomass conversion has many significant technical and economic hurdles that have prevented commercialization to this point. However, significant progress in recent research has motivated Iogen Corporation to build a 40 t/day plant in Ottawa, Canada to demonstrate the technology.