Yeast strains designed for 2. generation bioethanol production

The greatest technical hurdle yet to overcome in developing a 2. generation bioethanol production process is to develop a suitable fermentation organism that can efficiently ferment all of the sugars in lignocellulosic biomass into ethanol at a commercially viable rate (comparable to yeast based 1. generation ethanol production). A number of different wild type and engineered organisms for 2. generation bioethanol production has been proposed and described in the literature, but hitherto they all have serious and prohibitive shortcomings with respect to suitability in an industrial production process. Terranol will overcome these problems by modifying a selected yeast strain that has been verified (by realistic tests at Inbicon and Terranol) to fulfill all the basic industrial requirements (inhibitor and ethanol tolerance, tolerance to low pH, stable and high ethanol productivity, ease of handling, well known physiological characteristics). This strain will be supplied with the ability to ferment also the pentose sugars, that comprise 25-40 % of the sugar content in lignocellulosic materials, at a commercially viable rate. Thereby the ethanol yield of the process can be increased by 30-45 %, with a profound positive effect on the total process economy