Mitsubishi develops ethanol fuel production technology

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has developed technology for ethanol fuel production which complies with the standards set by the Japanese Automotive Standards Organisation (JASO), from lignocellulose (soft cellulose) such as rice straw and barley straw.

The Japanese government, academia and the agricultural and industrial sectors in Hyogo Prefecture, supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), were all involved in a study to look at effective utilisation of lignocellulose.

For the fuel to be produced on a commercial scale certain funds were needed, and MHI says it has met these targets. The company plans to further develop its bio-refinery technology with the companies and organisations involved.

Since 2008 the demonstration project has been getting developed for the production of cellulosic bioethanol in which MHI formed a joint venture with Hakutsuru Sake Brewing and Kansai Chemical Engineering, two companies which were responsible for verification of the bioethanol production processes.

In the beginning, each of the three participating companies took charge of specific areas based on their expertise and conducted verification testing at their own research facility. In December 2009, the whole process to produce ethanol from lignocellulose was verified at a demonstration plant built specifically for the project at MHI's Futami Plant in Hyogo.

The feedstocks used for the process included rice and barley straws which were supplied by a local farmers association.

MHI was in charge of the preprocessing and saccharification, Hakutsuru Sake Brewing for fermentation, and Kansai Chemical Engineering for distillation and dehydration.
The system used by the companies produces a sugar component which is the raw substance of the ethanol, through the use of hot compressed water and enzyme.

The total running costs from collection and transportation of feedstocks to ethanol production has now hit its target of 90 yen (€0.75) per litre.

Following these developments, MHI plans to allow other businesses to use the demonstration plant to develop applications of feedstock material other than straw and targeting production of non-ethanol products.