Liberación de azúcares reductores a partir de lirio acuático por hidrólisis termoquímica y enzimática

Abstract

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is considered a pernicious herb in many parts of the world due to its rapid growth. However, for its high content of cellulose and hemicellulose, it could be considered as raw material to produce fermentable sugars. In this work, the effect of sulfuric acid concentration by thermochemical pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis on the release of sugars from water hyacinth was evaluated. Initially, the effect of the sulfuric acid concentration from 1.5 to 9% at 120 ºC was evaluated. With 1.5%, the release of reducing sugars was 160 milligrams of reducing sugars per gram of dry matter (mg red-sug/g dm). After the thermochemical pretreatment, the enzymatic hydrolysis with the cellulase complex (NS22086) allowed obtaining a reducing sugars concentration up to 317 mg red-sug/g dm. These thermochemical and enzymatic approaches to recover reducing sugars from water hyacinth is promising and should be evaluated for bioprocess using reducing sugars as the main source of carbon, such as bioethanol production.