Dec 2, 2024
Ethanol producers are always striving for the next level and developing their plant’s process to its full potential. Novonesis, the company born out of a merger between Novozymes and Denmark-based bioscience company, Chr. Hansen, continually innovates and identifies products to assist producers in their pursuit of ever-improving yields and process efficiency. Innova® Eclipse, Novonesis’ new yeast strain, offers the benefits of the company’s yield and robustness platforms, explains Tom Kortuem, head of sales, Bioenergy for Novonesis in North America.
Innova Eclipse offers a 1-2% increase in ethanol yields, while reducing glycerol up to 40% compared to their leading yeasts, Innova Apex and Innova Quantum.
“I think the key differentiator is trying to squeeze out that extra ethanol,” says Amanda Moser, senior research and development manager with Novonesis. “Modifying the yeast ensuring we maintain the robustness we know our customers want and demand, while also reducing glycerol by utilizing that carbon for ethanol yield instead.”
It is all about getting the most of what you want out of the process—ethanol—and the least of what you don’t want — glycerol and organic acids — while achieving “fast fermentation kinetics,” explains Moser. Innova Eclipse is a fast-fermenting yeast, reducing overall fermentation times by up to 18% and offering higher throughput potential.
This yeast does not demand producers adjust their process to maximize its potential, but rather works well with however the plant is run. “We’re not saying, ‘you have to run this way in order to make our yeast work,’” Moser says. “We’re saying, ‘let our yeast work in your plant the way you want to run your plant.’ Because we know ethanol producers are different, and we know that they have their own processes and their own needs for their customer base, they have customers that they’re serving as well.
Customer centricity drives everything Novonesis does, she explains, and an early stage of each project is devoted to ensuring the product is something that fulfills customers’ needs or addresses problems producers are facing. Prior to launch, Novonesis ran Innova Eclipse through multiple trials at different ethanol plants.
“Ethanol producers are prioritizing efficiency, which plays a key role in achieving a lower carbon intensity score. Innova Eclipse can assist in this regard by reducing the amount of water needed for the process by enabling the fermentation to run with higher solids throughput,” explains Kortuem.
“When you look at producers today, they are trying to maximize the capital in their plants and trying to produce as much ethanol as possible and not be bound by the one thing in the plant which isn’t mechanical or capital related, it’s the biologics,” says Kortuem. “And yeast is that limiting factor from a biological standpoint in the plant. We want to make sure that biology isn’t a limitation [on] what the producers are able to achieve in the plant.”
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