Monday, April 19, 2010
12-39
Detoxification of steam exploded biomass by drying
One of major drawbacks in the pretreatment of biomass is the formation of degradation compounds that inhibit enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation. The most abundant inhibitors, furfurals, formic and acetic acid can be removed by drying the pretreated biomass. Indeed, in the steam explosion, a vapor stream that contains a relevant percentage of these byproducts is generated. Moreover, the steam exploded biomass has a relatively low water content, typically 50 wt%, and comes out from the explosion chamber at temperature near 100°C. These circumstances make the drying procedure acceptable from the energetic point of view. In this work we have assessed the effectiveness of the drying by carrying out SHF and SSF with straw previously steam exploded with a continuous gun (150 kg/h) at 200 and 210°C for 5 minutes. The bioconversion has been carried out at flask scale with solid load of 10 wt%, using a mix of cellulosolytic, hemicellulosolitic and β-glucosidase enzymes, and a commercial strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The yields of glucose conversion into ethanol have indicated that detoxification was very efficient. However, it has been highlighted that drying can depress the yield of enzymatic hydrolysis up to 20%, probably because of the fiber hornification. An energetic analysis and process simulations have been carried out to assess the viability of the drying procedure and the fractionation of the volatile products between the vapor and solid streams. The new developed concept has been patented.
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See more of The 32nd Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (April 19-22, 2010)
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See more of The 32nd Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (April 19-22, 2010)