One of Japan's Largest Pilot Projects to Start Integrated Production of Bioethanol from Woody Biomass

Copyright New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization

Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) announced on December 16, 2011, that it would start verification testing of an integrated woody biomass-to-ethanol production system. The test plant, one of the largest among pilot projects in Japan, was built at Oji Paper Company's Kure Mill in Hiroshima Prefecture.

The project is part of NEDO's "Project for the Development of an Innovative Cellulosic Ethanol Production System," which the organization has outsourced to Oji Paper Co., a major paper manufacturer, Nippon Steel Engineering Co., a subsidiary of Nippon Steel Corp., and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) since fiscal 2009.

The test is aimed at developing a high-efficiency, low-cost bioethanol production system that uses woody biomass in a non-competitive relationship to food. Technological development will include everything from the cultivation and harvesting of woody biomass resources (tree leaves and branches, residue from papermaking processes, forest thinnings), to transport and storage of raw materials, and finally to manufacturing processes such as saccharification, fermentation, and distillation. The plant is able to produce up to 250 to 300 liters of bioethanol from 1,000 kilograms of woody biomass materials per day.

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Posted: 2012/03/02 06:00:15 AM