Abstract
BackgroundPretreatment is the key step for utilizing lignocellulosic biomass, which can extract cellulose from lignin and disrupt its recalcitrant crystalline structure to allow much more effective enzymatic hydrolysis; and organic acids pretreatment with dual benefic for generating xylooligosaccharides and boosting enzymatic hydrolysis has been widely used in adding values to lignocellulose materials. In this work, furoic acid, a novel recyclable organic acid as catalyst, was employed to pretreat sugarcane bagasse to recover the xylooligosaccharides fraction from hemicellulose and boost the subsequent cellulose saccharification.ResultsThe FA-assisted hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse using 3% furoic acid at 170 °C for 15 min resulted in the highest xylooligosaccharides yield of 45.6%; subsequently, 83.1 g/L of glucose was harvested by a fed-batch operation with a solid loading of 15%. Overall, a total of 120 g of xylooligosaccharides and 335 g glucose could be collected from 1000 g sugarcane bagasse starting from the furoic acid pretreatment. Furthermore, furoic acid can be easily recovered by cooling crystallization.ConclusionThis work put forward a novel furoic acid pretreatment method to convert sugarcane bagasse into xylooligosaccharides and glucose, which provides a strategy that the sugar and nutraceutical industries can be used to reduce the production cost. The developed process showed that the yields of xylooligosaccharides and byproducts were controllable by shortening the reaction time; meanwhile, the recyclability of furoic acid also can potentially reduce the pretreatment cost and potentially replace the traditional mineral acids pretreatment.
Highlights
Pretreatment is the key step for utilizing lignocellulosic biomass, which can extract cellulose from lignin and disrupt its recalcitrant crystalline structure to allow much more effective enzymatic hydrolysis; and organic acids pretreatment with dual benefic for generating xylooligosaccharides and boosting enzymatic hydrolysis has been widely used in adding values to lignocellulose materials
Influence of Furoic acid (FA) concentration, and hydrolysis temperature and time on conversion of hemicelluloses In an acid-hydrolysis process, xylan was first degraded into polysaccharides with high degree of polymerization (DP); and these polysaccharides would be further degraded into oligomers with low DP or xylose [14]
It can be seen that the XOS yield was significantly enhanced when the hydrolysis time was increased from 15 to 60 min: the XOS yield generated by the use of 3% FA for 60 min was 16.3%
Summary
Pretreatment is the key step for utilizing lignocellulosic biomass, which can extract cellulose from lignin and disrupt its recalcitrant crystalline structure to allow much more effective enzymatic hydrolysis; and organic acids pretreatment with dual benefic for generating xylooligosaccharides and boosting enzymatic hydrolysis has been widely used in adding values to lignocellulose materials. The native structure of SCB, like other lignocellulosic biomasses, is strongly recalcitrant to enzymatic hydrolysis For this reason, the implementation of the pretreatment that can deconstruct the lignocellulosic entanglement is necessary [8,9,10]. Acidic pretreatments, including mineral and organic acids, have been proven to effectively disrupt the recalcitrant crystalline structure of cellulose and to efficiently enhance its enzymatic hydrolysis [12, 13]. It is urgent to speed up the technological innovation that can help augment the utilization and processing of SCB resources
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