Monday, May 5, 2008
8-10

Pretreatment of Waste Licorice by Aqueous Ammonia for Bioethanol Production

Suk-Won Chae1, Young-Duk Ko1, Don-Hee Park2, and Changshin Sunwoo3. (1) School of Biological Sciences and Technology, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea, (2) School of Biological Sciences and Technology, Interdisciplinary Program of Graduate School for Bioenergy and Biomaterials, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea, (3) Interdisciplinary Program of Graduate School for Bioenergy and Biomaterials, Research Institute for Catalysis, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea

Production of bioethanol from renewable ligonocellulosic materials and identification of appropriate feedstocks have been the subject of many recent research efforts. Waste licorice is a waste material generated from oriental herb pharmaceutical production. It is a potential feedstock for bioconversion to ethanol. In this study, pretreatment using aqueous ammonia was applied to this feedstock and its effectiveness on bioconversion was investigated. From batch pretreatment experiments conducted using aqueous ammonia, the optimum conditions of pretreatment were determined in terms of the reaction temperature, time, and ammonia concentration. The criteria of optimum condition were based on lignin removal, carbohydrate retention, and glucose yield upon enzymatic hydrolysis of the treated waste licorice by cellulase. The optimum conditions determined as such were: 150oC, 10 minutes, and 17% aqueous ammonia concentration. The 72-h glucose yield obtained from enzymatic hydrolysis of the waste licorice treated under the optimum condition was 88% of theoretical maximum with 15 FPU/g-glucan enzyme loading.

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