Project: Integrated Facility for Conversion of Lignocellulosic Biomass to Ethanol

This plant is first of its kind in India, which is designed for multi-feed/multi pretreatment capabilities; processing biomass such as Bagasse, Wheat straw, Rice straw etc. and pretreatment operations of biomass under a wide range of operating conditions (up to 25 bar g and 220 Deg C) with steam/ acid/alkali/aqueous ammonium hydroxide.

The plant is designed for processing 5 kg/hr dry biomass or 10 kg/hr 50% wet biomass. For this facility, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA was involved in providing the technical knowhow as NREL already had the similar pilot plant operating at their facility in Denver, USA. The plant includes continuous pilot scale pretreatment horizontal screw reactor system having effective throughput rate of 5 kg of dry feedstock/hr and capabilities of slip-stream of pretreated biomass to conduct conditioning, enzymatic hydrolysis, and fermentation in a batch configuration at relatively smaller volumes. The pretreatment is at about 25-30% solids.

The unit is fully instrumented, computer controlled and monitored with back-up fail control and data logging features. The unit is controlled by a dedicated Allen Bradley PLC system connected with a control computer. All the parameters such as residence time in reactor, reactor pressure/temperature, and steam flow rate can easily be set and controlled automatically through PC-PLC system.