Abstract
A combined ball milling and ethanol organosolv process is proposed for the pretreatment of three types of herbaceous biomass, giant miscanthus, corn stover, and wheat straw. The combined pretreatment was effective at both removing lignin and increasing the glucan content. After 120 min pretreatment, the glucan content increased to 63.09%, and 55.89% of the acid-insoluble lignin was removed from the giant miscanthus sample. The removal of cellulose, hemicellulose, and acetyl groups were correlated with the removal of lignin. The pretreatment of corn stover showed the highest removal of cellulose, but this was dependent on the removal of acid-insoluble lignin. The slope of the regression lines, which shows the correlation between the removal of lignin and cellulose, was lower than other correlations. The changes in biomass size were analyzed using size distribution graphs. With increasing pretreatment time, the particle size reduction improved in the three types of herbaceous biomass. Because of the combined physicochemical pretreatment, the enzymatic digestibility improved, and a maximum of 91% glucan digestibility was obtained from the pretreated corn stover when 30 FPU/g-glucan enzyme was added. Finally, compositional analysis of the recovered lignin from the remaining black liquor was investigated.
Highlights
IntroductionSugars derived from herbaceous biomass are important platform chemicals and can be further converted to high-value-added chemicals and biofuels via thermochemical or biological routes [1,2]
Sugars derived from herbaceous biomass are important platform chemicals and can be further converted to high-value-added chemicals and biofuels via thermochemical or biological routes [1,2].Pretreatment is an essential step in producing sugars from herbaceous biomass
These results indicate the combined for enzyme of FPU/g-glucan, respectively, as results indicate that that the the combined combined physicochemical physicochemical pretreatment used incellulose this study study increased the cellulose physicochemical pretreatment used in this study increased thein surface areathe available for indicate pretreatment used this increased cellulose surface area area available available for reaction with with cellulase, cellulase, improving enzyme enzyme accessibility
Summary
Sugars derived from herbaceous biomass are important platform chemicals and can be further converted to high-value-added chemicals and biofuels via thermochemical or biological routes [1,2]. Pretreatment is an essential step in producing sugars from herbaceous biomass. Lignin has emerged as a renewable source of aromatics for the chemical industry [5]. Both carbohydrate and lignin fractionation should be considered when pretreatment steps are applied to herbaceous biomass. Pretreatment consists of biological, chemical, or physical processes [6,7]. Combined physical and chemical pretreatment processes have been proposed to enhance enzymatic
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