Building A Tropical Sustainability Center Through Collaboration

Organizations: NCERC at SIUE and University of Hawai‘i – Hilo

This project will adapt promising pre-treatment technologies for bioindustrial manufacturing with feedstocks from Hawaii, conduct training for remote rural environments, and include culturally appropriate approaches to ensure community acceptance. 

The National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center (NCERC) at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville developed a low-cost, low-energy pathway to convert various wastes, including municipal solid waste, agriculture residue, and certain woody biomass to sugars and then to ethanol. This novel technology can enable distributed production of ethanol in remote locations using year-round biomass supplies typical for these regions. Hawaii is an ideal location for this adaptation and demonstration; success in this remote island with a range of feedstocks validates viability across a broad range of remote regions.  

Researchers will screen different kinds of feedstock to evaluate conversion into cellulosic sugars for the production of ethanol – a key product and intermediate for sustainable aviation fuel and ethylene commodity chemicals.  

Through this project, experienced NCERC engineers and fermentation scientists will assist the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in building a local fermentation program and sustainability center by reviving an idle fermentation suite with 5L, 30L, and 200L fermenters. They will also offer a summer training course at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo to train students in fermenter operations, strain propagation, simple downstream separation, and waste disposal. 

Project dates: 2024 – present

Funding source: BioMADE Project Call 4.0