Ethanol to be produce from wood chips

SunOpta BioProcess Inc. (SBI) of Brampton is getting $5.5 million from the federal government to demonstrate that it can turn wood chips into fuel-grade ethanol and the sugar substitute xylitol.

The cellulosic ethanol would replace gasoline, reducing greenhouse gases without using corn or other food crops.

The Canadian-made sweetener would replace xylitol imported from China where it is made from corn. The process also produces lignin, which can be burned to generate electricity or used to bind other wood waste into fuel pellets.

The grant was announced by Lisa Raitt, Halton MP and Minister of Natural Resources, and by Vicky Sharpe, president of Sustainable Technology Development Canada, at the Opta Minerals plant on Parkside Drive in Waterdown. SBI has a pilot plant there that turns poplar chips from Bancroft into peat-moss-like fibres that go through an enzyme process to make sugars that are fermented to produce ethanol.

Raitt said the technology deserves assistance because: "It's a process that produces two valuable products at the same time -- a cleaner fuel and a healthy sugar substitute -- and they both come from wood chips, and that's what I call innovation, exactly the kind of creative thinking our government is proud to support."

SBI says its process uses 75 per cent less water than needed to make ethanol from corn. Funding for the $16.5-million demonstration plant will also come from Xylitol Canada and Emerald Forest Sugars Inc.

The company hasn't picked a site for the demonstration facility, but David Sweet, MP for Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Westdale, quickly buttonholed president Murray Burke of Oakville to lobby for a location in Hamilton. Burke said the Waterdown site isn't big enough.

Xylitol Canada, majority owned by SBI, says it wants to be a low-cost, high-quality manufacturer of food and pharmaceutical-grade sweetener from readily available environmentally sustainable biomass.

The natural, low-calorie sugar substitute looks and tastes like sugar and is of equal sweetness. It's used in such familiar products as Trident gum, Altoids mints and Carole's low-sugar cheesecake -- the last of which Raitt sampled after her announcement. Xylitol is said to be diabetic-friendly and to have anti-cavity properties.

SunOpta, which owns 86 per cent of SBI, also owns OptaMinerals, a leading seller of industrial minerals, and a food group described as Canada's largest distributor of organic foods. It trades on Nasdaq (STKL) and the TSX (SOY).

Raitt and Sharpe yesterday announced another $52.5 million from SDTC for 15 other clean technology projects across Canada.

Recipients include a Vancouver-led consortium that plans to use genetic engineering to develop a non-food variant of mustard seed for biodiesel fuel production, a consortium including Ford Canada and Ballard Power Systems to improve hydrogen fuel cells for buses and an Ontario project to better sort and recycle waste plastics.

source: thespec