The magazine of the european research area European Commission Copenhagen, a missed chance?

Experimental biomass 

device at the INRA site 

in Estrée-Mons (FR).

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SPECIAL REPORT

 

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eu No. 63 | APRIL 2010 

13

of course motivated by economic considera-

tions,” explains Frank Kose. “We want to develop 

a saccharification technology that, in the future, 

can be installed in factories able to produce 

between 50 000 and 100 000 tonnes of sugar 

a year. To achieve this goal, we need major 

industrial partners. If NEMO develops a new 

technology to convert cellulose using enzymes 

and if this includes the Green Sugar technol-

ogy, industrialists involved in the project will 

use this and for us that will amount to selling 

our know-how”.  

It is in this way that NEMO is attracting the 

interests of industry as well as research. 

Because, in addition to hoping to help resolve 

the global energy problem, it is also a question 

of winning a share of the biofuel market, a 

fast-growing sector of the economy. What is 

more, not waiting for NEMO to realise its prom-

ises, a third generation of biofuels is already 

beginning to take shape. Based, among other 

things, on the extraction of oils from algae, 

this technology is also trying to emerge from 

the confines of the laboratory.   

Stéphane Fay

(1)  See the article From promises to doubts in our April 2008 

special issue Extracting ourselves from oil.  

Converting green waste

The researchers will seek to develop new 

ways of converting the lignocellulose (consist-

ing of lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose) 

present in agricultural and forestry waste into 

liquid biofuel. This will normally be done in 

four stages: preprocessing, extraction, fermen-

tation and distillation.  

The preprocessing of lignocellulose serves 

to break down the very solid lignin to extract 

cellulose and hemicellulose molecules and 

obtain glucose from them. Fermenting the 

glucose using yeast then produces ethanol, 

an alcohol that when distilled will be used 

to produce the biofuel. 

 NEMO will concentrate essentially on the 

first stage. “Its main objective will be to con-

vert the cellulose and hemicellulose carbon 

chains into simple sugars such as glucose, 

using new types of enzymes. This is known 

as saccharification,” explains Frank Kose. These 

enzymes are proteins that speed up the chem-

ical reactions and make it possible to convert 

molecules into different molecules. The other 

advantage is that these have a low toxicity 

for the microbes that control the glucose fer-

mentation. “For each enzymatic approach it 

is necessary to carry out a preprocessing to 

prepare the biomass for the action of the 

enzymes. The technology developed at Green 

Sugar, which is based on the use of inorganic 

acids, could increase their efficiency,” explains 

the project leader.  

In addition to its scientific aims, NEMO is 

also seeking to verify that the enzymes that 

come out of the laboratories will be sufficiently 

effective to be used in industrial processes 

of interest to companies. “Our commitment is