1.5 Current Technology and Commercialization

For over 20 years, a considerable research effort has been made to overcome the technical and economic barriers that currently limit the use of lignocellulosic biomass. Most recently, the DOE has funded the development of several lignocel — lulosic biofuel facilities that will help further define the parameters for potential success. Some aspects of possible systems, such as concentrated acid hydrolysis, dilute acid and steam explosion pretreatment, are relatively well understood at the research level and will benefit from pilot-scale testing. Other aspects, such as fer­mentation inhibitors and fermentation of C5/C6 sugars, require further research to create sufficient improvements for commercial testing. Some technologies, such as biomass gasification, syngas conversion to biofuels by either fermentation or FT process, have been tested at a pilot scale and are ready for further scale-up and integration testing. This is a crucial period of time for lignocellulosic biofuel development: success with the current pilot scale operations will drive the required investment for commercial scale, while poor results in the next 2-3 years may place a prohibitive restriction on future investment.