Abstract
Energy crops are not easily converted by microorganisms because of their recalcitrance. This necessitates a pretreatment to improve their biodigestibility. The effects of different pretreatments, as well as their combination on the enzymatic digestibility of Arundo donax L. were systematically investigated to evaluate its potential for bioconversion. Dilute alkaline pretreatment (ALP) using 1.2% NaOH at 120 °C for 30 min resulted in the highest reducing sugar yield in the enzymatic hydrolysis process because of its strong delignification and morphological modification, while ferric chloride pretreatment (FP) was effective in removing hemicellulose and recovering soluble sugars in the pretreatment stage. Furthermore, an efficient two-step ferric chloride-alkaline pretreatment (FALP) was successfully developed. In the first FP step, easily degradable cellulosic components, especially hemicellulose, were dissolved and then effectively recovered as soluble sugars. Subsequently, the FP sample was further treated in the second ALP step to remove lignin to enhance the enzymatic hydrolysis of the hardly degradable cellulose. As a result, the integrated two-step process obtained the highest total sugar yield of 420.4 mg/g raw stalk in the whole pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis process; hence, the process is a valuable candidate for biofuel production.
Highlights
At present, public health, resource, energy, food safety, and environmental issues are the most important focus areas for global sustainable development [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
After acid pretreatment (AP), the hemicellulose contents of the pretreated samples decreased from 29.7% to 12.3%~18.2%
Reducing sugar yield in the enzymatic hydrolysis of bamboo pretreated by dilute acid was only sugarmg/g yieldstalk, in thewhile enzymatic hydrolysis of bamboo by dilute acid wasstudy only 77.0 mg/g stalk, 77.0 glucose yields of
Summary
Public health, resource, energy, food safety, and environmental issues are the most important focus areas for global sustainable development [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Considering current energy and environmental crises, biofuel production from energy crops and lignocellulosic biomass wastes, which can produce renewable energy and balance the emission of carbon dioxide, is attracting increasing attention [1,2,3,4,6,8]. While annual dry matter yields of 13~21 t/ha have been obtained from some traditional agricultural wastes, yields of Arundo donax L. have reached 30~40 t/ha. These values are similar to that of energy crops such as Pennisetum grass (0~50.2 t/ha) and miscanthus (27~38 t/ha) [9,10,11]. Low cost, and environmentally benign production, Arundo
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