Lower energy energy sources.(Genencor International enzyme product for ethanol production)(Brief Article)

R & D, September, 2005

As a petroleum replacement, ethanol has become an essential component of the U.S.'s total energy diet. The energy required to process biomass (mainly whole ground corn) into ethanol, however, is roughly half of the energy derived from the biomass. A research team at Genencor International, Palo Alto, Calif., has developed a new enzyme product, GC 535, which reduces this process energy usage for the production of inexpensive glucose from granular starch.

GC 535 is a blend of enzymes which have a synergistic activity on granular starch. In addition to totally eliminating the liquefaction/saccharification steps, it increases the ethanol product yield by about 10% and the co-product yield by about 20%. By eliminating the cooking steps, about 10% of the overall...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.