Producing additional amounts of ethanol from glycerin in whole stillage may boost plant revenue.

By David J. Gaskin

Glycerin is at the forefront of a mobilization to improve the production yields of ethanol plants. Ethanol fermentation produces glycerin as a by-product and emerges from the distillation columns in whole stillage. In 2008, 170 dry-mill plants in the U.S. producing a combined 9.23 billion gallons of ethanol, generated more than 350 million gallons of glycerin. Researchers in the biotechnology industry are well aware of this situation and have recently invested in the means to develop technologies to convert glycerin to ethanol and a portfolio of other end-products.

Squeezing the Most from Grains

Industrial biotechnology company Glycos Biotechnologies Inc. (GlycosBio) of Houston, Texas, has recently developed a biotransformation technique that directs the glycerin in stillage into ethanol at high yield efficiency. Using microorganisms as biocatalysts