HCL CLEANTECH TECHNOLOGY

Enabling conversion of Biomass to Bio-Fuels and Bio-Products

HCL CleanTech has radically improved the economics of an old, industrially proven German process for converting biomass to fermentable sugars, usable as a feedstock for biofuels and bioproducts through an innovative proprietary technology to fully recover the concentrated HCl used as a catalyst in breaking the lignocellulose into sugars, lignin and tall oils. HCL CleanTech's technology removes the acid from the water and to a medium (extractant) that later releases the acid at the desired concentration. The process yields 97%-98% of the theoretical sugars contained in any lignocellulose. A clean concentrated (45%-55%) stream of fermentable sugars can then be converted into Ethanol, Diesel, Jet fuel, plastics as well as food and feed ingredients. Most of the reactions take place at low to ambient temperatures, resulting in very few degradation products. Energy consumption is low and there is very small use of virgin water. The cost of HCL CleanTech's sugars will be less than $0.08/lb in a full commercial facility.

Lignin

With temperatures during hydrolysis being as low as 10° c the lignin is essentially left intact. However the lignin cake carries much of the HCl and tall oils. HCL CleanTech has developed a process to de-acidify the lignin at ambient temperature using a novel and proprietary wash of the lignin with no water. This contributes both to the recovery of the HCl as highly concentrated gas and to the lignin coming out with very little chloride content. The lignin is odorless, brown, bone dry flakes, and is unadulterated. During the process the tall oils are separated and can be used in various industries. All the solvents used in the process are fully recovered and returned to the system.

Sugars from HCL CleanTech lab pilots were easily fermented by potential partners.

View our Recent Press Release on our Ethanol Process Details

Greentechmedia.com Article "What Matters in Biofuels" by Vinod Khosla suggests HCL Cleantech's patented technology may be one of the highly scalable biofuels methods of the future.   Click to read the article