Ethanosolv Pretreatment of Bamboo with Dilute Acid for Efficient Enzymatic Saccharification

Abstract

Bamboo is a potential lignocellulosic biomass for the production of bioethanol because of its high cellulose and hemicelluloses content. In this research, ethanosolv pretreatment catalyzed by sulfuric acid was studied in order to enhance enzymatic saccharification of moso bamboo. The addition of 2% (w/w on bamboo) sulfuric acid in water or 75% (v/v) ethanol was demonstrated effective in pretreatment and fractionation of bamboo. The ethanosolv pretreatment yielded a solid fraction with 84.5% cellulose. The cellulose-to-glucose conversion yields were 77.1% (ethanosolv) and 57.3%(water) after enzymatic hydrolysis of the solid fraction at 50 °C for 48 h using a enzyme loading (15 filter paper units of cellulase/g cellulose and 30 IU β-glucosidase/g cellulose). The concentrations of fermentation inhibitors such as 5-hydroxy-2- methyl furfural (HMF) and furfural were 0.96 g/L and 4.38 g/L, respectively, in the spent liquor after the ethanosolv pretreatment, which were slightly lower than those in the spent liquor from H₂SO₄-water treatment. When the pretreatment spent liquor was diluted with water, dissolved lignin was precipitated and then recovered through filtration. More than 87.2% of the original lignin in untreated bamboo was recovered as ethanol organosolv lignin.

Citation

Li, Zhiqiang; Jiang, Zehui; Fei, Benhua; Cai, Zhiyong; Pan, Xuejun. 2012. Ethanosolv Pretreatment of Bamboo with Dilute Acid for Efficient Enzymatic Saccharification. In: Proceedings of the 55th convention of Society of Wood Science and Technology, August 27-31, 2012 Beijing China. 9 p.