Pretreatment and enzymatic saccharification process of rapeseed straw for production of bioethanol

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate the yield of bio-ethanol produced by separate hydrolysis and fermentation (SHF) with the pretreated rapeseed straw (RS) using crude enzyme of Cellulomonas flavigena and Saccharomyces cereviase. Crude enzyme of C. flavigena showed enzymatic activity of 14.02 U/mL for CMC 133.40 U/mL, for xylan 15.21 U/mL, for locust gum and 15.73 U/mL for rapeseed straw at pH 5.0 and 40℃, respectively. The hemicellulose contents of RS was estimated to compromise 36.62% of glucan, 43.20% of XMG (xylan + mannan + galactan), and 2.73% of arabinan by HPLC analysis. The recovering ratio of rapeseed straw were investigated to remain only glucan 75.2% after 1% H₂SO₄ pretreatment, glucan 45.44% and XMG 32.13% after NaOH, glucan 44.75% and XMG 5.47% after NH₄OH, and glucan 41.29% and XMG 41.04% after hot water. Glucan in the pretreatments of RS was saccharified to glucose of 45.42 - 64.81% by crude enzyme of C. flavigena while XMG was made into to xylose + mannose + galactose of 58.46 - 78.59%. Moreover, about 52.88 - 58.06 % of bio-ethanol were obtained from four kinds of saccharified solutions by SHF using S. cerevisiae. Furthermore, NaOH pretreatment was determined to show the highest mass balance, in which 21.22 g of bio-ethanol was produced from 100 g of RS. Conclusively, the utilization of NaOH pretreatment and crude enzyme of Cellulomonas flavigena was estimated to be the best efficient saccharification process for the production of bio-ethanol with rapeseed straw by SHF.