Anders Thygesen1, Lasse Vahlgren1, Jens Heller Frederiksen1, William Linnane2 and Mette H. Thomsen3

1Biosystems Division, Riso National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy,

Technical University of Denmark 2Roskilde University 3Chemical Engineering Program, Madsar Institute

1,2Denmark United Arab Emirates

1. Introduction

In 2003 R. E. Smalley (Smalley 2003) made a list of the top 10 problems mankind was going to face in the next 50 years.

1. Energy

2. Water

3. Food

4. Environment

5. Poverty

6. Terrorism and War

7. Disease

8. Education

9. Democracy

10. Population

With the declining amount of fossil fuels, and the increasing energy demand, it is not possible to satisfy our large energy consumption without alternative energy sources, especially sustainable ones that also take care of problem number 4, (Environment). One of the possible ways to produce a liquid sustainable energy source is to replace our large gasoline demand with fermented biomass (bioethanol). To ensure that the food availability does not decrease (problem 3), the biomass for bioethanol fermentation is only gathered from waste materials of the food production, such as the straw of cereals. The fermentation on waste products is commonly referred to as 2nd generation bioethanol.

Biomass of interest for cellulosic produced ethanol includes wheat straw, rape straw and macro algae. In 2009 the production of oilseed rape in EU was 21*106 ton together with an even larger amount of rape straw (Eurostat 2010). The most commonly used rape in Europe is a winter rape with a low erucic acid and glucosinolate content (Wittkop et. al. 2009). The rape straw is composed of 32% cellulose and 22% hemicelluloses. In this chapter the focus will be on the fermentation of sugars derived from cellulose.

The enzymatic hydrolysis can be described in three steps: Endoglucanase separates chains of cellulose by breaking down the bonds in amorphous regions of the crystalline cellulose, thereby creating more free ends in the cellulose. Exoglucanase breaks the cellulose down from the non-reducing end into cellubiose (the disaccharide derived from cellobiose) (Teeri and Koivula 1995). This explains the importance of endoglucanase as it creates more "attack points" for exoglucanase. в-glycosidase breaks down cellubiose into glucose. Cellulase enzymes are commonly produced by the fungus Trichoderma reesei (Busto et al. 1996). This process has two functions, first it produces the glucose needed for the fermentation, and second it turns the non-soluble cellulose into soluble sugars, which provides the liquid medium required for fermentation.

The fiber structure consists of cellulose microfibrils, bound to each other with hemicellulose and lignin. A model of a plant fibre is shown in Fig. 1.

The hemicellulose content consists of branched and acetylated carbohydrates. These molecules consist of 90% xylan and 10% arabinan in wheat straw (Puls and Schuseil 1993). The lignin content of the straw consists of polymerized molecules with a phenolic structure. The ethanol production process was conducted by simultaneous saccharification of cellulose with cellulase enzymes, and fermentation of the produced glucose with Turbo yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Brewer’s yeast) (SSF) (Thomsen et al. 2009).

The production efficiency of the fermentation is strongly dependant on the wellbeing of the yeast. To visualize the health of the yeast, microscopic tests using blue staining were conducted. The bioethanol is produced from wet oxidized rape straw and the effect of the important fermentation inhibitor furfuryl alcohol is tested.