Monday, August 13, 2012
Columbia Hall, Terrace Level (Washington Hilton)
Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant carbohydrate source in the world and has potential for economical production of biofuels, especially ethanol. However, its composition is an obstacle for the production of ethanol by the conventional ethanol producing yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as it is not able to utilize hemicellulosic sugars of biomass which make up 20-35%. Furfural is an important chemical used in several industries such as oil refining, plastics, pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. It is the degradation product of xylose produced from hemicellulosic fraction of biomass during typical dilute H2SO4 pretreatment at high temperature. We found that dilute H3PO4 pretreatment at high temperature is highly effective for production of furfural during pretreatment of corn stover. We have optimized the pretreatment conditions (acid dose, temperature, duration) for maximum furfural production from corn stover using dilute H3PO4. The liquid portion after dilute H3PO4 (1%, w/v) pretreatment of corn stover (10%, w/w) at 200 oC for 10 min contained 10.2 g furfural (56% of theoretical yield) per L. The solid residue containing cellulose fraction was used for ethanol production by S. cerevisiae with excellent yield after enzymatic hydrolysis using commercial cellulase and β-glucosidase preparations. The details will be presented.