Monday, April 30, 2012
Napoleon Ballroom C-D, 3rd fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
With the current incertitude of oil reserves in conjunction with the high prices since the beginning of 21st century, once again were prioritize investments in research and development of ethanol and others biofuels. The lignocellulosic ethanol is one of the most exciting promises of biofuels in Brazil due to the availability of raw materials and knowledge of fermentation technologies obtained since 70's. However, the technology of production of this fuel has not yet fully established. To obtain these biomass sugar syrups, it’s required two preliminary steps: pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass. These two steps are responsible for the high cost of the production process and the difficulty of implementing a sustainable technology. This work have been conducted evaluating different types of biomass pre-treatment concerning isolated cases and associations between them in order to reduce the recalcitrance of biomass and to achieve high saccharification yields. The chemical composition of sugarcane bagasse was determined before treatment and the morphology and surface area of the pretreated materials were investigated by scanning electron microscopy and BET method using nitrogen adsorption. After removing water-soluble product due to ozone treatment, the best results of enzymatic hydrolysis were found to be 59.24% and 71.75% of glucose yield for ozonolysis and WDM treatments, respectively. Regarding the association between these treatments was possible to reach 89.67% of glucose yield. The surface area was increased by 7 fold and 17 fold after treatment by ozonolysis and WDM, respectively. For associated treatments, the surface area was increased by 27 fold.