Xuesong Tan

Liquid hot water pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse and its comparison with chemical pretreatment methods for the sugar recovery and structural changes

Liquid hot water (LHW), dilute hydrochloric acid (HCl) and dilute sodium hydroxide (NaOH) were applied to sugarcane bagasse (SB). Application of the same analytical methods and material balance approaches facilitated meaningful comparisons of glucose and xylose yields from combined pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis. All pretreatments enhanced sugar recovery from pretreatment and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis substantially compared to untreated sugarcane bagasse. Adding Tween80 in the enzymatic hydrolysis process increased the conversion level of glucan/xylan by 0.3-fold, especially for the low pH pretreatment where more lignin was left in the solids. The total sugar recovery from sugarcane bagasse with the coupled operations of pretreatment and 72 h enzymatic digestion reached 71.6% for LHW process, 76.6% for HCl pretreatment and 77.3% for NaOH pretreatment. Different structural changes at the plant tissue, cellular, and cell wall levels might be responsible for the different enzymatic digestibility. Furthermore, a combined LHW and aqueous ammonia pretreatment was proposed to reduce energy input and enhance the sugar recovery.

Liquid hot water pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for bioethanol production accompanying with high valuable products

Pretreatment is an essential prerequisite to overcome recalcitrance of biomass and enhance the ethanol conversion efficiency of polysaccharides. Compared with other pretreatment methods, liquid hot water (LHW) pretreatment not only reduces the downstream pressure by making cellulose more accessible to the enzymes but minimizes the formation of degradation products that inhibit the growth of fermentative microorganisms. Herein, this review summarized the improved LHW process for different biomass feedstocks, the decomposition behavior of biomass in the LHW process, the enzymatic hydrolysis of LHW-treated substrates, and production of high value-added products and ethanol. Moreover, a combined process producing ethanol and high value-added products was proposed basing on the works of Guangzhou Institute of Energy Conversion to make LHW pretreatment acceptable in the biorefinery of cellulosic ethanol.

The effect of metal salts on the decomposition of sweet sorghum bagasse in flow-through liquid hot water

The impact of the metal salts NaCl, KCl, CaCl(2), MgCl(2), FeCl(3), FeCl(2), and CuCl(2), particularly the latter, on the decomposition of hemicellulose and lignin from sweet sorghum bagasse in liquid hot water pretreatment processing was studied in an attempt to enhance the recovery of sugars. Transition metal chlorides significantly enhanced the hemicellulose removal compared to the alkaline earth metal chlorides and alkaline metal chlorides, contributing to the formation of a saccharide-metal cation intermediate complex. FeCl(2) greatly increased xylose degradation and about 60% xylan was converted into non-saccharide products. In contrast, an excellent total and monomeric xylose recovery was obtained after the CuCl(2) pretreatment. Most of the lignin was deposited on the surface of the residual solid with droplet morphologies after this pretreatment, and about 20% was degraded into monomeric products. The total recovery of sugars from sweet sorghum bagasse with 0.1% CuCl(2) solution pretreatment and 48 h enzymatic digestibility, reached 90.4%, which is superior to the recovery using hot water pretreatment only.

High consistency enzymatic saccharification of sweet sorghum bagasse pretreated with liquid hot water.

A laboratory set-up was designed to carry out high consistency enzymatic saccharification of sweet sorghum bagasse (SSB) which was pretreated by liquid hot water (LHW). The effects of two impellers on enzymatic hydrolysis of SSB were investigated. Compared with the double-curved-blade impeller (DCBI), the plate-and-frame impeller (PFI) could improve glucose production by 10%. Tween80 and fed-batch hydrolysis method adopted in this study produced total sugar of 17.06 g/L more than batch hydrolysis and raised the substrate consistency to 30%. At the final substrate loading of 30%, the concentrations of cellobiose, glucose and xylose reached to 15.01 g/L, 88.95 g/L and 9.80 g/L, respectively, and the ethanol concentration reached to 43.36 g/L in the case of cellobiose and xylose were not fermented by Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y2034. This study is an attempt at improvement of enzyme hydrolyzing LHW-pretreated material at high consistency.

Pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse with liquid hot water and aqueous ammonia

Low water consumption operation (LWCO) can reduce the usage of water and energy input for the liquid hot water (LHW) pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse (SB) but causes great negative effects on the saccharification rate of xylose and enzymatic digestibility (ED) of cellulose. Therefore, a combined pretreatment with LHW and aqueous ammonia (LHWAA) was developed. ED of glucan and xylan is enhanced greatly resulted from the removal of hemicellulose and lignin after the LHWAA pretreatment. However, the intriguing results of low lignin removal and ED value were observed at the high reaction temperature of 180°C for the second step pretreatment of AA. It was proposed that lignin or pseudo-lignin droplet redeposited on the surface of residual solids might play a crucial role in determining the ED, so it is indispensable to make the enzyme access to the cellulose by the step of post-treatment with ultrasonic washing or hot washing. Coupled with the process of post-treatment and enzymatic hydrolysis, a high hemicellulose derived sugars recovery of 75.5% and glucose recovery of 87% was obtained for LHWAA pretreatment.

Hydrolysis of sweet sorghum bagasse and eucalyptus wood chips with liquid hot water

The chemical composition, hydrolysis products, and kinetics during liquid hot water pretreatment of sweet sorghum bagasse (SSB) and eucalyptus wood chips (EWC) were investigated. Under optimal conditions, a total xylose recovery of 79.6% and 55.6% for SSB and of 74.9% and 84.4% for EWC was achieved after pretreatments in a step-change flow rate reactor (184 °C, 20 ml/min, 8 min, and 10 ml/min, 10 min) and batch stirred reactor (184 °C, 5%w/v, 18 min), respectively. More than 90% of the xylose was recovered as oligomers from SSB, independent of the type of reactor employed. The activation energies of xylan decomposition of SSB in the step-change flow rate reactor was 6.5-fold greater than that of EWC in the batch stirred reactor due to accumulation of acidic products. These findings show that sugar recovery is dependent on the reactor configuration for specific substrates.

Liquid hot water pretreatment of energy grasses and its influence of physico-chemical changes on enzymatic digestibility

Pennisetum hybrid I, II and switchgrass were pretreated with liquid hot water to enhance the release of sugars. The optimum hydrolysis factor for three energy grasses was 5.98, and the total xylose yield was 88.4%, 98.1% and 83.6% for grass I, II and S. It was indicated that the ratio of syringyl and guaiacyl units of lignin played an important role on the hemicellulose hydrolysis in LHW than branch degree, but latter contributed more on the characterization of xylooligomers degree of polymerization. Moreover, the analysis of multi-scale changes of substrate suggested that cellulose crystallinity index and degree of polymerization seemed no direct relationships for increase of enzymatic digestibility. While lignin barrier was the main factor limiting efficiency of sugar release, and Pennisetum hybrid with low lignin content and high sugar recovery was proved to be a prospective plant feedstock for cellulosic ethanol production.

Influence of lignin level on release of hemicellulose-derived sugars in liquid hot water

Lignin layers surrounding hemicelluloses and cellulose in the plant cell walls protect them from deconstruction. This recalcitrance to sugar release is a major limitation for cost-effective industrial conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to biofuels. Many literatures had reported the contribution of lignin removal to cellulose accessibility to enzyme, but less to the hemicellulose hydrolysis. Herein, beech xylan with lignin addition, partly delignified sugarcane bagasse (SB), energy sorghum hybrids (ESH) were treated in liquid hot water (LHW) to investigate the effect of lignin on hemicellulose decomposition. The addition of lignin can enhance the low degree of polymerization of xylooligomers production resulted from the acid catalyzed cleavage of lignin-derived acidic products. However, a negative correlation was observed initially between the lignin level and the total xylose yield from ESH. Furthermore, samples with lignin addition or high lignin content had a great resistant to harsh reaction environment, about 93.5% total xylose lost but only 52.3% released due to the lack of lignin protection for the sample with 100% lignin removal.

High conversion of sugarcane bagasse into monosaccharides based on sodium hydroxide pretreatment at low water consumption and wastewater generation

The generation of a great quantity of black liquor (BL) and waste wash water (WWW) has been key problems of the alkaline pretreatment. This work tried to build a sustainable way to recycle the BL for pretreating sugarcane bagasse (SCB) and the WWW for washing the residual solid (RS) of alkali-treated SCB which would be subsequently hydrolysed and fermented. The enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of the washed RS decreased with the recycling times of BL and WWW increasing. Tween80 at the loading of 0.25% (V/V) could notably improve the enzymatic hydrolysis and had no negative impact on the downstream fermentation. Compared with the non-recycling and BL recycling ways based on alkaline pretreatment, the BL-WWW recycling way could not only maintain high conversion of carbohydrate into monosaccharides and save alkali amount of 45.5%, but also save more than 80% water and generate less than 15% waste water.

Co-extraction of soluble and insoluble sugars from energy sorghum based on a hydrothermal hydrolysis process.

A process for co-extraction of soluble and insoluble sugars from energy sorghum (ES) was developed based on hydrothermal hydrolysis (HH). Two series of ES were investigated: one (N) with a high biomass yield displayed a higher recalcitrance to sugar release, whereas the second (T) series was characterized by high sugar extraction. The highest total xylose recoveries of 87.2% and 98.7% were obtained for N-11 and T-106 under hydrolysis conditions of 180°C for 50min and 180°C for 30min, respectively. Moreover, the T series displayed higher enzymatic digestibility (ED) than the N series. The high degree of branching (arabinose/xylose ratio) and acetyl groups in the hemicellulose chains of T-106 would be expected to accelerate sugar release during the HH process. In addition, negative correlations between ED and the lignin content, crystallinity index (CrI) and syringyl/guaiacyl (S/G) lignin ratio were observed. Furthermore, finding ways to overcome the thickness of the cell wall and heterogeneity of its chemical composition distribution would make cellulose more accessible to the enzyme.