Abstract
Pretreatment to improve the enzymatic digestibility of highly crystallized lignocellulosic biomass is essential in biorefinery processes. This study investigates the combination of lignocellulose pretreatment with continuous alkaline single-screw extrusion and ultrasonication for biosugar production. Miscanthus sacchariflorus was used because it is a promising bioenergy crop. The results show that ultrasonication with continuous alkaline pretreatment increased the enzymatic digestibility of carbohydrates and reduced the use of chemicals during pretreatment. An hour of ultrasonication following 0.2 M NaOH (2.25 mol-NaOH/kg-biomass) continuous alkaline pretreatment resulted in a 6.7% increase in total biosugar production (83.1% of theoretical yield), a decrease of up to 26.1% in chemical usage, and a 17.0% increase in lignin removal compared with the case without ultrasonication. The developed method can be considered an effective and eco-friendly approach to the production of bio-based materials.
Highlights
Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant biomass available on earth, and is a source of value-added products that can be converted into fuels, power, hydrogen, and chemicals [1,2]
The composition of the raw M. sacchariflorus G1 biomass presented in Table 1 is similar to that noted in a previous study [17]; it contained 40.3 ± 0.55 wt.% glucan, 24.1 ± 0.07 wt.% hemicellulose, and 24.1 ± 0.02 wt.% lignin
Native M. sacchariflorus harvested in west China was reported to consist of 38.2% cellulose, 31.0% hemicellulose, and 20.3% lignin [27]
Summary
Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant biomass available on earth, and is a source of value-added products that can be converted into fuels, power, hydrogen, and chemicals [1,2]. In this context, fermentable sugars ( known as biosugars) from non-edible lignocellulose have been of interest for several decades as platform chemicals that can replace or complement present fossil-based materials and fuels [3,4,5]. The development of biorefineries for the production of green materials and chemicals from renewable carbon sources is essential to address the gap between bio- and fossil-based fuels. The pretreatment step increases the accessibility of carbohydrates to biodegradation, and is the most energy-demanding and expensive process [9,10]
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