Barley-Based Biorefinery Process
AssigneesDanisco US Inc., The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture
InventorsNhuan P. Nghiem, Kevin B. Hicks, David B. Johnston, Justin M. Montanti, Jayarama K. Shetty
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Abstract
The barley-based biorefinery process comprises a method of optimizing the production of ethanol and value-added products from barley feedstock. Specifically, the biorefinery process is an integrated barley treatment process that utilizes essentially all components of barley (including the barley hulls) to efficiently produce ethanol and other value-added liquids and solids.
Claims15
A method of processing barley to co-produce ethanol and value-added products, the method comprising the steps of:
- (a) separating barley hulls from barley endosperm;
- (b) treating the hulls with alpha-amylase and glucoamylase to produce a glucose solution and destarched hulls;
- (c) treating the destarched hulls to produce pretreated hulls by soaking the destarched hulls in aqueous ammonia, or soaking in ethanol and aqueous ammonia, or by treating with anhydrous ammonia;
- (d) hydrolyzing the pretreated hulls with hemicellulases to produce a xylo se solution and residual solids;
- (e) further hydrolyzing the residual solids with cellulases to produce a glucose solution;
- (f) using the glucose solutions obtained in (b) and (e) as mashing waters to produce ethanol in addition to ethanol produced from starch in the barley endosperm, or optionally to produce a same amount of ethanol from a reduced quantity of barley endosperm;
- and,
- (g) using the xylose solution obtained in (d) for production of value-added products.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.