AdvanceBio Systems announced that the Department of Department of Chemical Engineering at Lund University has selected AdvanceBio Systems’ SuPR2G Pretreatment Reactor to conduct research related to the production of fuels and chemicals from biomass feedstocks.
The department houses the Process Development Unit, which is a set of bench and pilot scale unit operations for steam pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation. Most of the current research is directed towards lignocellulosic ethanol production.
Lund University selected SuPR2G considering its unique design and process capabilities which allow researchers to work with high-solids lignocellulosic feedstocks across a wide range of temperatures, pressures and pH’s,” said Dale Monceaux, a principal of AdvanceBio Systems.
“The equipment will be used for research, development and demonstration of technologies related to the production of fuels and chemicals from a range of renewable substrates,” Monceaux added.
AdvanceBio Systems’ SuPR2G reactors are designed to process a variety of agricultural and forest products such as straw, bagasse, corn stover, energy crops, wood chips and bark, generating volumes of representative hydrolysates, cellulose cake and lignin in support of process and product development programs.
Wheat straw and wood chips are expected to be the primary feedstocks for the Lund system. The skid-mounted SuPR2G package reactor system is essentially a self-contained research tool including an integrated high-pressure steam generator and PLC with a touch-screen HMI and capabilities of Ethernet connection to existing data acquisition systems.
“The success of our unique, self-contained SuPR2G reactors led to the development of other continuous process unit operations, including small-scale sterilizer, centrifugation, distillation and evaporation systems,” Monceaux said.
According to Monceaux, one major advantage of the stand-alone systems is that with single point connections to instrument air, power and water, the units are ready to operate without on-site assembly or construction.
editor@greentechlead.com