Cemiebio Alcoholes – Advanced Biofuels in the Autotransport Sector

The Cluster of Lignocellulosic Biofuels for the Autotransport Sector (known as well as the Bioalcohols Cluster) was part of the Mexican Innovation Centre in Bioenergy.

The Bioalcohols Cluster started operations in August 2015 to scale up the biorefining technologies developed in the Nerixis Project to produce bioethanol, biobutanol and biohydrogen with competitive production costs. Agricultural residues such as wheat and barley straws, corn stover as well as agave and sugarcane bagasse were employed as lignocellulosic feedstock. Other forestry residues such as olive tree pruning were also tested.

The Cluster terminated prematurely in February 2019 due to changes in government policies regarding renewable energies.

Proof-of -concept processes were developed for the pretreatment, saccharification and fermentation stages with a capacity of up to one ton of biomass (dry basis) per day. The bioethanol production capacity was 50 litres per day. The environmental and economic sustainability of the proposed technologies were analysed, and technology transfer mechanisms were established. The availability of the agricultural residues mentioned above was measured along the Mexican territory.

The continuous pretreatment technology reached a TRL 7. The reactor is ready for commercialization in two capacities: 5 kg/hr and 50 kg/hr of agricultural residues.

A biorefinery concept design for 10 ton/day of biomass (identified as a “mini-biorefinery”) was produced. Other designs for 100 to 600 ton DB/day feedstock were also produced with the following characteristics:

- Coproduction schemes of advanced biofuels (bioethanol, biogas and biohydrogen) and carbon dioxide
- Flexible use of feedstock: wheat straw, corn stover, sugar cane bagasse, agave bagasse, and olive tree pruning
- Use of residual lignin for producing high-added value products
- Minimum greenhouse emissions and minimum water usage
- Use of low-investment cost technologies
- Environmental and economic sustainability analysis, reaching total production costs of 0.45 USD per litre of lignocellulosic bioethanol.

The mini-biorefinery was chosen for the technology acceleration program “Leaders of Innovation 2019” of the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK.

The Cluster was considered by the Secretary of Energy as a key stakeholder in the Bioethanol Technology Roadmap of Mexico in pushing forward the production of lignocellulosic bioethanol.