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The Hemp Farm Bill from 2018 resulted in the production growth of the Hemp plant for multiple purposes. The primary output of the hemp plant is the essential oils extracted from the plant. Hemp biomass that remains after essential oil extraction from the hemp plant can serve as a sustainable feedstock for chemical and energy products. The remaining biomass is composed primarily of wax, cellulose, and proteins. The purpose of this project is to find a use for the excess hemp biomass, which serves as the byproduct of the essential oil extraction. As the wax and proteins can be sold separately, one objective is to find a separation method for these substances so they can be sold in their raw form.

The wax extraction takes place in a pressurized reactor utilizing supercritical carbon dioxide at 350 bar to separate the wax from the rest of the plant. After the wax has been extracted, the biomass is sent to the protein separator where proteins are separated from cellulose by dissolving them in aqueous solution so they can be extracted and sold as raw materials. Next, the biomass undergoes pretreatment, and is sent to the plant slurry reactor where the biomass is treated with dilute sodium hydroxide to increase the sugar content and solubilize the hemicellulose and lignin. The aqueous effluent from the plant slurry reactor is combined with cellulase to enzymatically hydrolyze the cellulose in the stirred tank bioreactor where cellulose is converted into glucose and xylose. Typical yields for this reaction are about 85%. Ethanol is produced via fermentation of glucose and xylose with the presence of yeast in the fermentation reactor and further purified using distillation columns. The overall process will produce approximately 900kg of wax and 820kg of proteins per day to be sold and 2000 kg of ethanol per day to be either recycled back into the ethanol extraction facility or to be sold.