Abstract
A hydrotrope-based pretreatment, benzenesulfonic acid (BA) pretreatment, was used to fractionate bamboo in this work. With optimized content (80 wt %) of BA in pretreatment liquor, about 90% of lignin and hemicellulose could be removed from bamboo under mild conditions (95 °C, 30 min or 80 °C, 60 min). The potential accessibility of BA pretreated substrate to cellulase was thus significantly improved and was also found to be much higher than those of acidic ethanol and dilute acid pretreatments. But the deposition of lignin on the surface of solid substrates, especially the BA pretreated substrate, was also observed, which showed a negative effect on the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency. The addition of inexpensive soy protein, a bio-based lignin-shielding agent, could readily overcome this negative effect, leading the increase of enzymatic conversion of cellulose in BA pretreated substrate from 37% to 92% at a low cellulase loading of 4 FPU/g glucan. As compared to acidic ethanol and dilute acid pretreatments, the combination of BA pretreatment and soy protein could not only stably improve the efficiency of non-cellulose components removal, but also could significantly reduce the loading of cellulase.
Highlights
Adequate energy supply and healthy environment are the basic guarantees for the survival and development of human society
In order to examine the performance of benzenesulfonic acid (BA) pretreatment, ET and dilute acid (DA) pretreatments were selected as the controls
When the concentration of the added hydrotropes is above its specific minimal hydrotrope concentration (MHC), these hydrotropes can increase the solubility of hydrophobic substances through aggregation [9]
Summary
Adequate energy supply and healthy environment are the basic guarantees for the survival and development of human society. The endless energy and environmental issues caused by fossil fuels (such as gasoline and diesel) has posed a serious threat to global sustainable development [1]. Due to the advantages of high yield and renewable nature, transferring lignocellulose into biofuels (such as cellulosic ethanol) through biochemical methods has become one of the effective ways to solve the world’s most important energy and environmental problems [2]. Enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation are the most commonly used methods for producing biofuels [3]. In order to overcome the natural recalcitrance of lignocellulose to enzymes, non-cellulosic components should be initially fractionated from lignocellulose by using pretreatments (especially chemical pretreatments) prior to enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation [4]. In the past two decades, a large number of non-organic solvent-based chemical pretreatments
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