in this process, we have a mixture of sugars -- glucose, xylose, mannose and other sugars. we have organisms engineered to be able to ferment some of those sugars primarily glucose and xylose at the same time but they don't do it as efficiently as they need to and we'd like to engineer them to do other sugars as well to make this a more efficient process and get more ethanol for every pound of biomass that we bring in. narrator: at nrel, they are continually engineering these organisms to become more efficient in hopes of one day producing a single fermenting organism that can tolerate high concentrations of ethanol and work on all sugars at once. but all of these processes take a lot of energy. and here in the pilot plan they are working on a solution to that as well, by using the last remaining piece of the cellulosic material the lignin. aden: that lignin plays a very important part in the energy picture of this process. because cellulosic biomass has this lignin component that can be used for a fuel, you don't have to buy coal. you don't have to buy natul gas. you can b

in this process, we have a mixture of sugars -- glucose, xylose, mannose, and other sugars.we bring in. narrator: at nrel, they are continually engineering these organisms to become more efficient in hopes of one day producing a single fermenting organism that can tolerate high concentrations of ethanol and work on all sugars at once. but all of these processes take a lot of energy. and here in the pilot plan they are working on a solution to that as well, by using the last remaining piece of the cellulosic material, the lignin. aden: that lignin plays a very important part in the energy picture of this process. because cellulosic biomass has this lignin component that can be used for a fuel, you don't have to buy coal. you don't have to buy natul gas. you can be a self-sustaining energy plant like this by burning this lignin residue. you could not only provide all of the energy needs for a processing plant such as this, you could also potentially sell a green energy byproduct to the local power grid. narrator: by maximizing the energy potential of cellulosic material, nrel'