Saccharification of recalcitrant biomass and integration options for lignocellulosic sugars from Catchlight Energy's sugar process (CLE Sugar).

Background: Woody biomass is one of the most abundant biomass feedstocks, besides agriculture residuals in the United States. The sustainable harvest residuals and thinnings alone are estimated at about 75 million tons/year. These forest residuals and thinnings could produce the equivalent of 5 billion gallons of lignocellulosic ethanol annually.

Pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of recovered fibre for ethanol production.

Recovered fibre from pulp mills represents a potentially significant feedstock for conversion to ethanol. Enzymatic hydrolysis of untreated recovered fibre (86.5 Kappa, 13% lignin) resulted in a hexose yield of approximately 23%, which highlighted the need for an effective pretreatment.