(753b) Scale-up and Process Intensification of Agricultural and Municipal Solid Waste Conversion Using Ionic Liquid Based Process

The sustainable production of both biofuels and chemicals depends largely on access to efficient and cost-effective biomass conversion technologies. Among the various pretreatment technologies being developed, ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment has been receiving significant recent attention as a potential “greener” process that enables fractionation of a wide range of feedstocks due to its high biomass processing efficiency. This presentation will describe recent advances in IL process development that we have demonstrated in the conversion of different types of municipal solid waste blends to fermentable sugars. We will highlight two integrated IL technologies: acidolysis with chloride based IL pretreatment and one-pot biomass conversion using a “bionic liquid” (amino acid based IL). For the acidolysis process, an acid catalyst was used to hydrolyze polysaccharides to monosaccharides following IL pretreatment, which provides an enzyme-free process with significant reductions in processing times and material costs. The one-pot biomass conversion combines the pretreatment and enzymatic saccharification into one vessel, eliminating solid-liquid separation and extensive water-washing steps with the potential to offer better economics, scalability and environmental sustainability. Process scalability and biomass conversion efficiency along with the feedstock cost and quality will be presented and discussed, as well as identifying and overcoming the remaining technical and economic challenges of these approaches to provide perspectives and opportunities for future process development and optimization.