It’s an important step forward, as researcher Way Cern Kohr describes in his doctoral thesis. While the process is still far from industrial production, the numbers at lab scale show promising efficiency.
Grass is abundant and relatively cheap, making it a candidate for sourcing second-generation sugars and avoid the use of food crops. While grass doesn’t seem to match the buzz around converting wood residues, there are some ongoing projects of “green biorefineries” using grassland.
With the achievement of the first drops of “grassoline”, researchers are now looking into optimizing the process in cooperation with the business world. It’s a long haul process. For example, the French biofuel company Global Bioenergies was founded in 2008, when it started working on a lab scale prototype. Now, after nine years and a €6.6M IPO, it’s finally moving to a demo plant, the last step to commercialization.
Read the full article at Labiotech.
