Currently, ethanol is made primarily from the corn grain starch in the United States and from cane sugar/molasses in other part of world. However, grain or cane sugar alone cannot meet the future demands for ethanol and newer feedstocks are being constantly explored. Waste oilseed cakes and hulls are one such suitable alternative feedstock. We propose to manufacture ethanol as a by-product of the vegetable oil refinery that could be integrated for bio-diesel processing. Oil seed cakes and hulls (i.e. rape seed cake, palm seed cake and jatropha seed cake) are made up of cellulosic materials and are waste products left over after extracting the oil.

Through this project we will develop new fundamental understanding of the complex processes occurring when: (1) oil cakes are pretreated by concentrated/aqueous ammonia to enhance the reactivity/accessibility of structural carbohydrates (cellulose and hemicellulose), (2) pretreated materials are enzymatically hydrolyzed to mixed sugars by synergistic combinations of glucanases, xylanases and other enzymes and (3) these mixed sugars are fermented to ethanol by both native and genetically modified microorganisms. The efficiency of the pretreatment and fermentation process will be evaluated based on the yield of free sugars and ethanol, respectively.