New, innovative pretreatment of Nordic wood for cost-effective fuel-ethanol production

The main objective of this project is to develop pretreatment techniques that will reduce the overall production costs for fuel-ethanol from Nordic lignocellulosic biomass. A second objective is to quantify the possibilities to reduce investment and operating costs by co-locating and integrating the ethanol plant with existing industry infrastructure (e.g. pulp mill, oil refinery). A third objective is to join Nordic research resources in the liquid biofuels area.

The project addresses the following technical issues:

• Fundamental understanding of the chemical/physical changes that occurs during wood pretreatment.
• Develop predictive pretreatment models.
• Handling of process liquors and by-products.

The project is carried out as an integrated type project under Nordic Energy Research.