Green Liquor Pretreatment of Mixed Hardwood for Ethanol Production in a Repurposed Kraft Pulp Mill

Abstract

The development of a new, relatively simple process, which uses green liquor (sodium carbonate and sodium sulfide) as a pretreatment for the production of ethanol is described in this article. The pulps produced by this process can be enzymatically hydrolyzed to monomeric sugars with a high overall sugar recovery. The use of green liquor for pretreatment ensures that the chemicals used during pretreatment can be recovered efficiently using proven technology and can be easily implemented in a repurposed kraft pulp mill. The yield of pulps produced by the green liquor pretreatment process is about 80% with nearly 100% cellulose and 75% xylan in retention in mixed southern hardwood. The low pH prevents the random hydrolysis of polysaccharide and secondary peeling reactions from occurring during the pretreatment, resulting in higher retention of the polysaccharides in pulp. About 35% of the lignin is removed during the green liquor pretreatment process, which is sufficient for efficient enzymatic hydrolysis. The amount of sugar produced in enzymatic hydrolysis increased with both the green liquor and enzyme charge. The increase in enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency was small as the total titrateable alkali was increased beyond 12–16%. With green liquor pretreatment at 16% Total Titrateable Alkali (TTA), the overall sugar recovery for hardwood was shown to be around 77% at a cellulase charge of 20 FPU/gm of substrate. A sugar recovery of 80% could be achieved at higher enzyme charges. These levels of sugar recovery are competitive with other pretreatments for hardwood. This novel pretreatment process can be used to repurpose kraft mills, which are being closed due to a decrease in the demand for paper in North America, for production of ethanol.