Genencor cuts cellulosic enzyme load two-fold with launch of Accellerase TRIO

June 23, 2011 |

In California, Genencor announced a two-fold decrease in enzyme load for cellulosic conversion to fermentable sugars, with its new enzyme cocktail, Accellerase TRIO. The company said that its new TRIO package demonstrates that Genencor is continuing to deliver on innovation with its “easiest to use” package that combines all the required activities for cellulosic conversion.

Genencor’s Dr. Aaron Kelley said that “while Accellerase Duet made some big strides on the hemicellulsase front, TRIO is now driving C5 and C6 performance, while also showing great improvement with acid-based pretreated biomass.”

The sophistication of today’s enzyme cocktails is getting to be pretty staggering – TRIO has eight different families of activities, and would number in the hundreds if every activity in every family was counted. Kelley said that TRIO has already been employed by Inbicon and KL Energy at the demonstration scale for cellulosic ethanol, and is being tested by others the company is not ready to name at this time.

Accellerase TRIO is the latest advancement in Genencor’s award-winning Accellerase product line that earned the “Frost & Sullivan 2009 New Product Innovation Award” for enzymes for biofuel production and also this year’s “Sustainable Technology Award” at the World Biofuels Market conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The TRIO release comes just 15 months after the introduction of Accellerase DUET.

Asked if this fast pace of development would continue, Kelley said that “it takes a lot of work to launch every 12-18 months, but we are committed to show industry that we are getting enzyme efficacy – and also, that reflects the pace of development in the lab. Plus, enzymes are still on the top 5 list of topics that our customers are thinking, worried about, in tersm of the commercialization of cellulosic biofuels. It won’t slow slow down that much, if at all.

“But, well down the line, we may see releases specific subsets – for specific pretreatments, for example, and that products will become more tailored. The world becomes more complicated when that happens, which is why we focus on being partnered with the right folks, too.”

Ethanol producers will discover other benefits, the company said. Accellerase TRIO works with a wide variety of renewable feedstocks, allowing producers to select nonfood crops and municipal solid waste that are abundant in their region to convert to ethanol or biochemicals. In addition, Genencor said that Accellerase TRIO can help boost total production by lowering viscosity and enabling producers to process more biomass.

The new product will enable biofuel producers, the company said, to more cost-effectively manufacture cellulosic ethanol from a wide range of renewable nonfood feedstocks such as switchgrass, wheat straw and corn stover as well as from municipal solid waste.

Category: Fuels

Thank you for visting the Digest.