Abstract
A two-step process was proposed to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of Miscanthus sinensis based on a comparative study of acid/alkaline pretreatments. Ferric chloride pretreatment (FP) effectively removed hemicellulose and recovered soluble sugars, but the enzymatic hydrolysis was not efficient. Dilute alkaline pretreatment (ALP) resulted in much better delignification and stronger morphological changes of the sample, making it more accessible to enzymes. While ALP obtained the highest sugar yield during enzymatic hydrolysis, the soluble sugar recovery from the pretreatment stage was still limited. Furthermore, a two-step ferric chloride and dilute alkaline pretreatment (F-ALP) has been successfully developed by effectively recovering soluble sugars in the first FP step and further removing lignin of the FP sample in the second ALP step to improve its enzymatic hydrolysis. As a result, the two-step process yielded the highest total sugar recovery (418.8 mg/g raw stalk) through the whole process.
Highlights
Energy, environmental pollution, public health and food safety are the most important issues for global sustainable development, and production of renewable energy from different organic wastes is attracting increasing attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The weight loss could be related to the hemicellulose removal of the stalk samples [28]
The corresponding hemicellulose contents of the ferric chloride pretreatment (FP) samples were obviously lower than that observed in raw stalks, indicating that the removal of hemicellulose was much easier than the removal of cellulose during pretreatment [11,22]
Summary
Environmental pollution, public health and food safety are the most important issues for global sustainable development, and production of renewable energy from different organic wastes is attracting increasing attention [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Lignocellulosic biomass (e.g., corn stalk, wheat straw, and rice straw), which is a sustainable and renewable energy source with reduced net CO2 emission, has been widely investigated as substrates for ethanol and biogas fermentation [8,9]. In addition to these biomass wastes, energy crops are potential candidates for biofuel production [10,11]. While various agricultural wastes were widely investigated for biofuel production, studies on the energy crops (e.g., Miscanthus sinensis) were still limited. Considering its potential, Miscanthus sinensis was chosen as a model energy crop to study its application prospects
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