Several efforts have been made during
the last three decades to
develop successful lignocellulose-based technologies for the production
of fuels and chemicals. However, such technologies still seemed to
be emerging, because of the high technical risks involved and huge
capital investments. This paper describes a holistic approach toward
utilization of sugar cane bagasse as lignocellulosic feedstock into
fuel (ethanol), chemical (furfural), and energy (electricity), using
a biorefinery approach instead of co-generation. The proposed scheme
could be integrated with existing sugar or paper mills, where the
availability of biomass feedstock is in abundance. Fermentable sugar
components (xylose and glucose) from sugar cane bagasse have been
extracted employing acid hydrolysis and enzymatic saccharification.
Recovery and reuse of saccharifying enzyme was a major process advantage.
The pentose fraction was efficiently utilized for yeast biomass generation
and furfural production. High-temperature fermentation of a hexose
stream by thermophilic yeast Kluyveromyces sp. IIPE453 (MTCC 5314) with cell recycle produced ethanol with an overall
yield of 88% ± 0.05% and a productivity of 0.76 ± 0.02 g/L
h–1. A complete material balance on two consecutive
process cycles, each starting with 1 kg of feedstock, resulted in
an overall yield of 366 mL of ethanol, 149 g of furfural, and 0.30
kW of electricity.