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Short Communication

*Corresponding author
Dr. Friedrich Streffer, maxbiogas GmbH, Alte
Dorfstr. 14A, 16348 Marienwerder, Germany, Tel:
+49 3337 3774140 ; Fax: +49 3337 3774189; E-mail:

Lignocellulose to Biogas and

other Products

Submitted: 14 April 2014

Accepted: 12 May 2014

Streffer, F.,

Published: 14 May 2014

Maxbiogas GmbH, Germany

ISSN: 2333-7117
Copyright
2014 Streffer

Abstract
Great efforts are made to realize concepts for replacing oil and using renewable
resources as starting material in biorefineries. Currently, biorefineries produce chemical
base materials on an industrial scale from readily available sugar-or starch-containing
plant components. However, thesefeedstocks only account for about 1% of the available
plant biomass. The majority of available plant biomass, constitutes lignocellulose, which
is currently inaccessible to conventional biorefineries and biogas processes.However,
in future generating higher economic efficiency for biorefineries and biogas plants is
important to ensure these operations can compete with the efficiency of oil refineries
even in the absence of government subsidies. Further, it is desirable to increase the
ecological efficiency of these operations in order to reduce the required agricultural
land use and to improve the CO2 balance. All these claims could be achieved if hitherto
waste products such as digestates, agricultural, food and municipal wastestreams
could be used as feedstock. Physico-chemical and biotechnological pretreatment
technologies, such as the LX process are being established, which would allow utilization
of these feedstocks particularly for biogas plants. This review summarized the technical
and economic framework to establish these enabling technologies with a particular
focus on development of second generation biogas process.

ABBREVIATIONS
atm: atmosphere; CBP: Combined Bio Processing; CO2:
Carbon dioxide; C5 sugar: Pentoses; C6 sugar: hexoses; C:
Degree Celsius; KTBL: Kuratorium fr Technik und Bauwesen
in der Landwirtschaft e.V.; min: minute(s); SHF: Saccharification
followed by Fermentation; SSF: Simultaneous Saccharification
and Fermentation

INTRODUCTION

Oil is the basis of modern life, ranging from energy production

to packaging material, from synthetic fibre to the production of
basic chemicals [1]. Highly efficient processes for extracting and
refining crude oil, which have been optimized over the last 100
years allows its economical use today. However, our oil reserves
are finite. Therefore, great efforts are made to realize concepts for
replacing oil by renewable biomass based resources as feedstock
in biorefineries.
Currently, first generation biorefineries produce chemical
base materials on an industrial scale from readily available sugaror starch-containing plant components. However, sugar and/or
starch based feedstocks are also the basis for food production
and account only for about 1% of the available plant biomass [2].
By contrast the majority of available plant biomass constitutes
lignocellulose, which is not accessible by first generation
bioprocesses such as biogas production. In the future, energy
and raw material production in biorefineries can preserve
our current standard of living only if the efficiency and cost of
production can compete with todays efficiency and economy of
petroleum refineries [3,4].
Significant cost determining factors of a biorefinery are
commodity prices, costs and expenses of the fermentation
process and for product workup in the downstream process. Only

OPEN ACCESS

Keywords
Pretreatment process
Lignocellulose
Biogas
Efficiency

efficient and cost effective solutions in all three unit operations

will secure the economic energy and raw material production.
This is possible using raw materials which are hitherto waste
products. In biorefineries these are e.g. plant residues that
can only be of commercial use after pretreatment. Therefore,
pretreatment processes are key enabling technologies, which
allow utilization of a cheap and available feedstock base for
design of mass- and economically efficient, second generation
biomanufacturing processes [5]. The focus of these efforts is to
achieve the process more cost- and energy-efficient [6].

Efficiency of biorefineries

Plants used as a carbon source for industrial purposes in

biorefineries are a reality today in different markets of renewable
materials and renewable energy. Examples include production
of lactic acid, 1,3-propandiol, ethanol etc. (see Table 1) [7]. All
these processes have in common that their production is based
on the utilization of energy-rich and easily accessible plant
parts (the sugar or starch based depot substances). This in turn
requires the cultivation of specialized plants for these systems
such as sugar beet or wheat grains for bioethanol production or
so-called energy crops like corn for biogas production [8]. For
these production processes to be economical plant sizes of more
than 10.000 tons are required [8,9]. As consequence investment
costs of such systems as well as their operation costs are high,
this limits the number economic project realizations. However in
the biogas market the situation is different due to government
subsidies. Due to these subsidies biogas plants already operate
efficiently in this market with a throughput in the lower four digit
range of tons per year [10]
Now the market is expected to mature. Among other things
the objectives include:

Cite this article: Streffer F (2014) Lignocellulose to Biogas and other Products. JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1023.

Streffer (2014)
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economic utilization of plants as a carbon supplier
without subsidies.

ensuring sustainable production processes,

Reduction of substrate costs important

One of the largest cost positions in the operation of

biorefineries are substrate costs [11]. Thus it is one of the
major tasks to reduce these costs to ensure the world-wide
success of sustainable production of materials and energy in an
economically viable way. But how can this be achieved? Only
approximately only 1 % of the available plant biomass represents
the depot substances starch and sugar. If the energy crops used
today could be replaced by plant parts which accumulate as waste
in agriculture, food production or in communities, the amount of
cheaply available input material would increase immensely. In
the current processes however, it is not possible to use the waste
as substrate, mainly because of the contained lignocellulose
that cannot be fermented in biorefineries efficiently due to the
chemical structure.

Lignocellulose hard to crack

There are several excellent reviews on the structure of

lignocellulose [12,13]. Therefore we keep the description
brief. Lignocellulose is the most abundant source of unutilized
biomass and its availability does not necessarily impact land use.
Lignocellulose in general consists of three biopolymers:
Cellulose (40%-50%)

Hemicellulose (25%-30%)
Additionally it contains other extractable components [6].
The relative content of each polymer depends on the origin,
but in general the lignin content will increase with the age of
the plant. In nature cellulose fibers are embedded in a matrix of
other structural biopolymers, mainly hemicellulose and lignin
with cotton balls being the only exception. Lignin is composed
of the three major phenolic components p-coumaryl alcohol,
coniferyl alcohol and sinapyl alcohol. Lignin is synthesized by
polymerization of these three components and their ratio varies
between different plants wood tissues and cell wall layers.
Lignin is a complex hydrophobic, cross-linked aromatic polymer
that interferes with the carbohydrate hydrolysis process [14].

Table 1: White biotechnology products [7].

Ethanol

Methane

Lactic acid

1,3-Propandiol (PDO)
Succinic acid
JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1023 (2014)

The major impediment towards development of an economic

viable technology for degradation of cellulose is its association
with lignin, its crystallinity and the small surface area for an attack
[14]. However, the efficient utilization of the three components
cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin will be the key to economic
viability of lignocellulose biorefineries.

The biorefinery marktet

The German chemical industry already covers more than 10%

of their raw material requirements from renewable raw materials
[16]. This proportion will increase in the coming years and the
utilization of lignocellulose for microbiological processes will be
a prerequisite for the economic success of such biorefineries.

As described above pretreatment processes should ensure

a separation of lignocellulose at the molecular level into the
individual components.This ideally takes place under mild
conditions to ensure that no toxins arise. Such protocols are
currently under development. For their success in the market,
the economic viability of this process will play a very crucial role.

Typical processing in biorefineries

Lignin(10%-30%)

Product

A representative diagrammatic framework of lignocellulosic

biomass is illustrated in figure 1. The cellulose chains are
organized as bundles which are stabilized by hydrogen bonds.
Embedded in hemicellulose and covered by lignin these bundles
are called microfibrils and have diameters in the range of 10
to 20 nm [15]. These micro fibrils are tightly packed. Neither
enzymes nor small molecules like water can enter the complex
framework [14]. The microfibrils are usually associated to
macrofibrils and also higher structure (see figure 1).

Markets

Fuels
Solvents
Polyethylene
Energy
Fuels
Polylacticacid (PLA)
Food additiv
Polyurethane
Personal care
PTT
1,4 Butanediol
Pharmaceuticals
Fibers

Biorefining is described as the transfer of the efficiency and

logic of fossil-based chemistry and substantial converting industry as well as the production of energy onto the biomass industry
[16]. Usually the microorganisms of a biorefinery utilize either
carbohydrates like starch, cellulose, or hemicellulose. Crop residues often consist of lignocellulose, the tight composite of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Great efforts are necessary to
convert lignocellulose in biorefineries to enable their recovery.
Currently, the following steps are applied to gain accessibility to
the components for downstream microbial conversion processes
[17]:
Step 1: Separating lignincellulose into hemicellulose,

Volume p.a.

Companies

Resources

65.000.000 tons
(biobased)

Solvay
Dow
Braskem

Starch, sugar

400.000 tons (biobased)

Dow
Cargill

4.300.000 tons
(biobased, Germany)
50.000 tons
(biobased)

50.000 tons
(biobased)

Many

Starch, sugar
cellulose, others

DuPont

Starch

DSM

Starch

Starch

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Streffer (2014)
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cellulose and lignin (often referred to as a pretreatment of
the substrate) to make the (hemi-)cellulose accessible for
microorganisms and thus to make the (hemi-)cellulose
degradable.

Step 2: Hydrolysis of the hemicellulose and cellulose,

in order to divide them into oligomeric or monomeric
sugars molecules (C5 and C6 sugar).
Step 3: Product generation, to prepare the desired
product from the monomeric sugars by microorganisms,
for example, ethanol, butanol, lactic acid, biogas, etc.
Step 4: Product recovery.

Step 1: Pretreatment methods [6]

To be able to utilize crop residues efficiently it is imperative

to break down the lignocellulosic structure. This is implemented
in so-called pretreatment processes, which differ substantially in
their type of treatment [14]. Among them are:

Biological pretreatment processes [6]

These methods use microorganisms like fungi which are

able to degrade lignin. The lignin degradation always requires
oxygen, and the pure lignin degradation process cannot serve as
the sole energy and carbon source for the microorganism [18]. It
is important to note that most of white biotechnology processes
are anaerobic fermentation processes and therefore inhibited by
oxygen. Furthermore, the microorganisms mainly destroy the
lignin in order to use the cellulose or hemicellulose as carbon
and/or energy source [18].

Physical / mechanicalpretreatment processes [6]

These methods aim to make the lignocellulose components

accessible by mechanical treatment or by high pressure and/or
high temperature. This approach is usually very energy-intensive
but does not lead to a separation of cellulose, hemicellulose and
lignin, on a molecular level.

Chemical pretreatment processes [6]

Using solvents cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin can be

separated in the molecular components. Subsequently, the
individual components have to be recovered by separate
chemical processes from the solution. The chemical pretreatment
nevertheless has some disadvantages as the process itself is
energy-intensive, much water is necessary and undesirable
degradation products of biopolymers occur at the required high
temperatures, which are toxic to microorganisms.
Steps 2 and 3: Hydrolysis and product formation [6]

The fermentation of the hemicellulose and cellulose

carbohydrate polymers requires the hydrolysis of the polymer
into oligomers, or even monomers. Currently, three approaches
are implemented mainly [14,19]:

Saccharification followed by fermentation (SHF)

Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF)

Initially oligomers and/or monomers will be produced with

the help of additionally employed enzymes. Then these oligomers
or monomers are subjected to a fermentation process.
In this method oligomers and/or monomers are produced
with the help of additionally employed enzymes and these
oligomers and/or monomers are simultaneously subjected to a
fermentation process.

Figure 1 Schmatic structure of lignocellulose. The hexagons denote the lignin subunits p-coumaryl alcohol (H), coniferyl alcohol (G) and sinapyl alcohol (S).
JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1023 (2014)

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Combined bio processing (CBP)

A microorganism (or consortium of microorganisms) is

responsible for the formation of the oligomers and/or monomers
and their fermentation at the same time.
From an economic perspective CBP is preferable, among
other things, because there are no additional enzymes used and
consumed in this process. For an application of this method, it
is imperative that no toxins (e.g. furfural) are contained in the
pretreated cellulose or hemicellulose which inhibit the growth of
the organisms [15].

Step 4: The products generated in step 3 are initially in

aqueous fermentation media. Before they can be sold or used for
further applications they need to be cleaned and/or isolated from
unwanted by-products.

Production of biogas

Among the most commonly used fermentation processes

and thus one of the largest markets for fermentation in Germany
is the production of biogas. As a consequence of missing or
insufficient pretreatment processes [17] the depot substances
of plants are well decomposed, while lignocellulose is, however,
scarcely degraded at all in current biogas digesters [20].Hence,
lignocellulose remains practically unused as fibrous content in
the digestate, which has hardly any economic value.
The biogas market is currently considered to consist of about
7.600 plants that do not have good efficiency for the utilization
of lignocellulosic residues. Government policies however, are in
favor of support the usage of residues. In addition, the pressure
on plant operators to improve the efficiency of their investments
is steadily increasing because of rising feedstock prizes.

How to improve biogas plant efficiency

The economic upgrading of conventional biogas plants can

be achieved with a pretreatment process implemented that
can be integrated into the existing biogas process, recovering
the huge biogas potential of lignocellulosic materials [21].
However, current biorefinery pretreatment process concepts
are not compatible with the biogas market. A successful biogas
pretreatment process must be able to be operated economically
at processing approximately 1000 ton dry matter a year. In this
scenario it is mandatory to use the waste heat of a biogas plant to
satisfy the energy demand. However, a pretreatment processes
that meets this particular technical framework the biogas market
offers excellent conditions for market entry.
Typical difficulties in large biorefinery projects, such as the
lack of logistics for the substrate provision [22], would shrink if
the waste material of the biogas plant, namely the solid digestate,
is used as substrate. This lignocellulosic waste would go through
the pretreatment process as input material and subsequently
be fed back to the microbiological process of biogas fermenter.
A process that can also use in addition to the solid constituents
of the digestate other residues from agriculture, food production
or the municipalities such as bedding after using them in the
barn, leaves, green waste, landscaping grass, builders from fruit
and vegetables solves the problem of substrate costs, needed
agricultural land and disposal of solid digestate.
JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1023 (2014)

DISCUSSION
The Lignin extraction process (LX-process)
The newly developed LX-process is a chemical pretreatment
process to break up lignocellulose in its components. In a first
step, the biomass is dissolved. In the second step the cellulose,
hemicellulose and lignin are precipitated as solids. The
precipitation is optionally carried out in a fractionated fashion,
so that the individual components cellulose, hemicellulose and
lignin can be obtained separately (see Figure 2).

In the special case of the biogas market a fractionated

precipitation is not absolutely necessary. The microorganisms
of a biogas plant convert cellulose and hemicellulose even in the
presence of lignin. The prerequisite is that the structure of the
molecular composite between the individual components has
been broken up beforehand.
A first implementation of the LX-process in a pilot-LX plant
will reveal that the method is very interesting for the biogas
market. But the LX-process also offers other advantages that
make its use attractive. These benefits include, in particular:
1.

The LX system is highly compatible.

The process conditions are that mild that toxic degradation

products of cellulose and hemicellulose are avoided and thus the
obtained cellulose and hemicellulose can be degraded directly by
microorganisms into biogas.
2.

The available waste heat of biogas plants can be used.

The LX-process conditions can be selected in a form that

the available waste heat of a biogas plant is sufficient with its
temperature range to operate the LX-process.
3.

Nutrient and carbon cycles are closed.

After the fermentation processes the digestate still containing

lignin and minerals may be supplied to the soil again.

4. The Greenhouse Gas Balances (GHG-balance)

of a standard biogas plant can be significantly improved
Enhancing the biogas yield significantly reduces in consequence
the CO2 emission. Furthermore, the emission contribution to
the GHG-balance can be significantly reduced, as drying of
the solid digestate and the associated pasteurization of the
digestate brings the nitrification process to a halt. Thus, the
particularly harmful nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions are almost
completely suppressed. The extensive discussion on (indirect)
land use change [4,23,24,25] can be mitigated switching from a
1. Generation to a 2. Generation production of biogas employing
residues [4,25] and the (partial) return of carbon to the soil [4].

Special features of the LX-process

LX-process is operated at temperaturesbelow 100 C, both

the process it self as well as the work-up of the operating supplies. This allows suppressing the degradation reactions mainly
of hemicellulose, an important prerequisite for subsequent utilization by microorganisms. Most pretreatment processes have
still a considerable energy demand even after heat integration.
This can be significantly reduced, by keeping water away from
the process and thus also heating or evaporating as little water

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as possible.The integration of this knowledgeinto the LX-process
means that the LX-process without heat integration according to
present estimates can gain the required amount of heat energy
from the processed residues in the LX-plant.
With the successful launch and the implementation of the
recovery of the individual components cellulose, hemicellulose
and lignin LX-plants are becoming increasingly interesting
for other markets where, for example, chemical raw materials
obtained with the help of microbiological processes (see Table
1). Furthermore, the process can also be transferred to the
production of other products than biogas from the rich palette of
white biotechnology.

Increasing product yield

In all these processes that operate successfully on the basis

of starch or sugar today, the efficiency of these processes can be
increased by utilizing the residual materials with the LX-process
as additional input for the particular process. This is the potential
of the LX-process.
The LX-celluloses are successfully converted by commercially
available cellulase preparations into monomeric sugars and by
microorganisms into biogas without inhibiting the growth of the
microorganisms. In addition to the carbohydrate stream (the
LX-celluloses) also the lignin can be recovered. Initial results
show that the lignin of the LX process is similarly well soluble
in various solvents, such as in DMSO, ethanol or acetone as
organosolv lignins, while the carbohydrate content is very low
with substantially less than 1%.

In the past two years, maxbiogas GmbH realized the LXprocess in a mini plant capable of converting up to 10 dry
kilograms of plant residues per day to LX-celluloses and/or LX-

lignin. First results show that the properties for LX-cellulose from
the batch LX-process and from the continuous LX-process of the
mini plant are comparable, e.g. in their biogas yield indicating
the near total conversion of the carbohydrate stream. Currently
maxbiogas GmbH scales up the LX-process, expanding from its 10
kg per day mini plant line to a pilot facility capable of converting
about three dry tons of plant residues to LX-cellulose per day.

In addition the combination of the LX-process with other

fermentation processes is investigated in the laboratory. Current
results in the process and product development of the LX-process
show the great potential of using LX-plants not only for efficiency
improvements in the biogas sector but also to increase the
efficiency of other production processes in biorefineries.

CONCLUSION

It is obvious and the political will that biorefining will play an

important role for energy production as well as the production of
numerous products in the future. In order to become economically
viable which means to be able to operate without subsidies
and to improve sustainability in the production processes the
efficiency of biorefineries has to improve significantly. In recent
years, great efforts have been made in the field of biorefinery
and first successes are achieved (see for example Table 1).
Biorefinery plants focused in particular on developments in steps
2 and 3 of product generation For example, certain methods have
been developed, as well as enzyme preparations or genetically
modified microorganisms that can produce a variety of products
from carbohydrate-based substances.

New developments improve the system

However, there is still huge potential within the system,

especially in the increased use of residues. Therefore, a number

Figure 2 Scheme of the lignin extraction process (LX-process).

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of companies in different parts of the world are currently
working on an economic realization of step 1, the break-down
of lignocellulose [26-30]. One promising approach is the LXprocess. The focus of the process lies especially on the application
of mild process conditions, so that toxic degradation products of
the cellulose are avoided and microorganisms will degrade the
celluloses obtained from the LX-process directly. In addition, the
use of water in the LX-process has been limited to a minimum.
The relevance of this particular point in the development of
economic biorefinery plants was, inter alia, described in the final
report of the cluster BIOREFINERY2021 [26]. The authors of the
module Development and evaluation of integrated biorefinery
New Concepts summarize their findings as follows: The
combination of the pre-treatment process and the subsequent
process steps, however, turned out to be extremely important.
Especially the low water loading in all stages of the process
should be a top priority. Otherwise laborious processes (e.g.
evaporation) are necessary in order to subsequently separate the
desired products. [26].

Entering a new era

Furthermore the method has the potential to lift biorefining to

a new level since more or less all disadvantages of the processing
today will be reduced. The digestate which is today treated
as end of the process still contains large amounts of substrate
bound within the lignocellulose. This potential can be used by
the LX-process. Even the carbon- and mineral-cycle is closed,
since the granular LX-digestate can still be used for treatment of
soil afterwards. As a consequence the need for freshly produced
substrates decreases and agricultural land can be used for
the production of food instead of substrate for biorefineries.
Additionally the possibility to ferment also other waste products
from agricultural or food production further reduces the amount
of especially grown substrates. These factors help to save natural
resources on the one side and to reduce substrate costs, an
important factor for efficiency on the other side. This increases
the land efficiency of biorefinieries and economic viability of the
process will increase automatically.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kind support by the Europischer Fonds fr regionale

Entwicklung is acknowledged.

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Cite this article

Streffer F (2014) Lignocellulose to Biogas and other Products. JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1023.

JSM Biotechnol Bioeng 2(1): 1023 (2014)

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