Once considered bothersome waste, low-value biomass is now promising fodder for conversion into higher-value: more environmentally friendly products. Turning the refuse into desirable market commodities, often at low production costs, is applicable to a host of organic materials, and potentially offers new markets to the farming and forestry industries.

Battelle researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., are developing processes to demonstrate that when key platform materials are successfully and cost effectively extracted from biomass, the chemicals can be used to form a host of environmentally friendly products, such as clean, alternative fuels and solvents. Once the desired material is removed from the biomass, Battelle scientists determine the correct catalytic or fermentation process to convert the material into higher demand products that meet stricter environmental standards.

One established and successful example of such conversion comes from transforming paper mill sludge. Research and technology demonstrations by PNNL’s partner, Biofine Corp., show that a multipurpose chemical called levulinic acid, which normally is produced from refined petroleum, can be produced from paper mill sludge. The acid is produced at one-tenth of the cost of current manufacturing processes.

Building upon the levulinic acid production process, PNNL provides a patented catalysis process that upgrades the levulinic acid to produce methyltetra-hydrofuran (MTHF) for use in producing clean, alternative fuels and chemicals. The benefits of this process are that it doesn’t create harmful pollutants or greenhouse gases and requires less energy for production.

Another area being developed using similar approaches involves the recovery of glucose from mill feed, the low-value by-product of wheat flour milling. Scientists at PNNL developed the glucose recovery step. An important output from this process is the high-protein by-product which can also be used as animal feed. Current work is focused on the development of the processes to use the glucose in value-added products. Both lactic acid production by fermentation and sorbitol production by catalytic hydrogenation are being tested. Glucose is a key starting point for many products, such as organic acids (like lactic) or sorbitol and its derived products (like glycols and glycerol) used as blending components in personal care products.

Future steps will be to develop and operate a pilot project to produce the glucose product and the high-protein animal food by-product. Initial economic models suggest that the glucose product can be recovered on a cost-competitive basis relative to other sugar sources.

For more information on these processes, or to inquire for commercialization, contact Doug Elliott at (509) 375-2248, dougc.elliott@pnl.gov.

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