BRC Science Highlight Next-generation ammonia pretreatment enhances cellulosic biofuel production Objective A new liquid ammonia to improve the deconstruction of cellulosic fuels using an ammonia-based pretreatment. Approach Collaboration between GLBRC, JBEI, and BESC: this new pretreatment was developed entirely within the BER family. A new liquid ammonia pretreatment called Extractive Ammonia (EA) simultaneously converts native crystalline cellulose to highly digestible material while selectively extracting up to ~45% of the lignin from the biomass (Fig. a). Result/Impacts EA-treated corn stover gave higher fermentable sugars yield compared to an older ammonia treatment with 60% lower enzyme loading (Fig. b). EA preserves extracted lignin, offering the potential for lignin valorization with fuel and chemical co-products. Single-stage EA fractionation achieves high biomass sugar yields comparable to results obtained with Ionic Liquid pretreatment. Sugars derived from EA pretreatment are readily fermentable due to removal of most inhibitors. Notes: text Title again: Text 1-2 sentence summary? a. Biomass delignification and b. impact glucan conversion of EA process da Costa Sousa L, Jin M, Chundawat S, Bokade V, Tang X, Azarpira A, Lu F, Avci U, Humpula J, Uppugundla N, Gunawan C, Pattahil S, Cheh A, Kothari N, Kumar R, Ralph J, Hahn MG, Wyman CE, Singh S, Simmons BA, Dale BE, Balan V. “Next-generation ammonia pretreatment enhances cellulosic biofuel production”. Energy & Environmental Science (2016) [DOI: 10.1039/C5EE03051J] GLBRC March 2016