Power­ful enzymes cre­ate eth­an­ol from agri­cul­tur­al har­vest waste

The EU’s DISCO pro­ject developed power­ful enzymes and enzyme cock­tails suit­able for vari­ous raw mater­i­als, with the pur­pose of con­vert­ing agri­cul­tur­al side streams into fer­ment­able sug­ars and fur­ther into products such as bioeth­an­ol. Plant bio­mass was chosen as the raw mater­i­al for the pro­ject, since it con­tains ligno­cel­lu­losic bio­mass, which is an abund­ant raw mater­i­al. The com­mer­cial­isa­tion pro­cess of the second-gen­er­a­tion bioeth­an­ol industry, which uses ligno­cel­lu­losic bio­mass instead of starch, has reached crit­ic­al momentum: there are a total of 15 plants being con­struc­ted in Europe, the Amer­icas and Asia. Ligno­cel­lu­losic bio­mass use will sub­stan­tially expand the mar­ket for indus­tri­al enzymes. The total indus­tri­al enzyme mar­ket is cur­rently worth approx­im­ately 2.7 mil­lion euros per annum. The raw mater­i­als stud­ied in the pro­ject were spruce, straw, corn cob and wheat bran used as anim­al feed. In Fin­land, the pro­por­tion of forest bio­mass, and con­ifer bio­mass in par­tic­u­lar, is sig­ni­fic­ant. Ligno­cel­lu­losic bio­mass con­sists of cel­lu­lose, hemi­cel­lu­lose and lignin. Agri­cul­tur­al har­vest waste con­tains large amounts of ligno­cel­lu­losic bio­mass, which can be con­ver­ted indus­tri­ally into fer­ment­able sug­ars with the help of enzymes. Microbes can then be used to pro­duce vari­ous chem­ic­als, such as bioeth­an­ol, from the sug­ars. Ligno­cel­lu­losic bio­mass con­tains sub­stan­tial amounts of lignin, which inter­feres with enzyme activ­ity. The DISCO pro­ject pro­duced new know­ledge on the inac­tiv­at­ing prop­erty of lignin, which helped sci­ent­ists devel­op enzymes that tol­er­ate lignin bet­ter. New inform­a­tion on enzymes and activ­it­ies that break down hemi­cel­lu­lose, vital for the effi­cient exploit­a­tion of plant bio­mass, was also obtained dur­ing the pro­ject. Brit­ish sci­ent­ists par­ti­cip­at­ing in the pro­ject determ­ined the struc­tur­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of vari­ous raw mater­i­als. This inform­a­tion can be used to select appro­pri­ate enzyme cock­tails for raw mater­i­als when upgrad­ing plant bio­mass. The Dutch com­pany Dyad­ic is cur­rently com­mer­cial­ising the enzymes developed in the pro­ject. Research Pro­fess­or Kristi­ina Kruus of VTT coordin­ated the DISCO pro­ject, which had a total of 11 par­ti­cipants from sev­en coun­tries. VTT’s sci­entif­ic role in the pro­ject related to dis­cov­er­ing and devel­op­ing enzymes from envir­on­ment­al samples as well as cul­ture col­lec­tions. Source: VTT TECH­NIC­AL RESEARCH CENTRE OF FINLAND