Inbicon has transferred drawings of Inbicon's high dry matter hydrolysis reactor to the Netherlands based Life sciences and Materials sciences company DSM. DSM evaluates building a hydrolysis reactor based on Inbicon's patented free fall mixing principle for enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass at high dry matters. By this transfer Inbicon has granted DSM the right to practice high dry matter hydrolysis in such a reactor for the purpose of experimental testing of enzymes. In publications DSM will refer to Inbicon's proprietary liquefaction method. Vice President of Inbicon, Jan Larsen, is happy with this agreement and is prepared to offer similar conditions to other development companies or universities doing research involving high dry matter enzymatic hydrolysis.
The hydrolysis reactor is developed as a part of the Inbicon process for production of second generation bioethanol, but the reactor could also be used for liquefying biomass suitable for gasification, hydrogenation, organic synthesis, or production of biogas and feed. In the Inbicon process lignocellulosic biomass such as wheat straw is hydrothermally pretreated to render the cellulose fibres more accessible to enzymes. The pretreated biomass is transferred to the hydrolysis reactor developed for high dry matter hydrolysis.
Production of concentrated sugar solutions is beneficial in relation to subsequent fermentation or other microbial processes due to improved volumetric productivity and reduced cost of down stream processing. In bioethanol production, the energy requirement for distillation is significantly reduced if the fermentation broth contains above 4% ethanol. This requires a sugar concentration above 8%, which with most types of lignocellulosic biomasses corresponds to an initial dry matter content above 20%. It is therefore desirable to subject pretreated biomasses with high dry matter contents,  above 20%, to enzymatic hydrolysis in order to be able to subsequently produce bioethanol containing fermentation broths suitable for distillation of ethanol.