3-85: Monitoring Process Streams towards Understanding Ionic Liquid Pretreatment of Switchgrass and Cornstover

Pretreatment of Biomass is essential for breaking apart highly ordered and crystalline plant cell walls and loosening the lignin and hemicellulose conjugation to cellulose microfibrils, thereby facilitating enzyme accessibility and adsorption and reducing costs of downstream saccharification processes.  Recent reports1,2 have shown very high yields at very low Enzyme loadings.  However, pretreatment still remains one of the most costly steps in lignocellulosic biofuel production. Ionic liquids are novel solvents showing great promise for cellulose solubilization.  Instant rejection of dissolved cellulose upon anti-solvent addition shows promise for recyclability in addition to other desired attributes like low volatility, non-flammability and thermal stability.  Although shown to be very effective in cellulose solubilization 3,4 ,  disposition of hemicellulose and lignin are not understood.  The aim of this ongoing work is to understand ionic liquid pretreatment by monitoring and analyzing process streams towards gaining better understanding of pretreatment process.

1) Teymouri, F., Laureano-Perez, L., Alizadeh, H., & Dale, B. E. (2005). Bioresource Technology, 96, 2014–2018.
2) Kim, T. H., Kim, J. S., Sunwoo, C., & Lee, Y. Y. (2002). In 24th Symposium on Biotechnology for fuels and Chemicals.
3) Dadi et al, Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, 136-140, 407
4) Singh, S. & Simmons, B, In-Situ Examination of Biomass Dissolution and Cellulose Regeneration Enabling Cellular level Insight of Ionic Liquid Pretreatment Process (manuscript in preparation)