Tuesday, April 20, 2010
10-40
High temperature liquefaction of pretreated wheat straw at high solids concentrations
Operating enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass at high solids concentrations has several economical advantages such as less volume to process, less water for recycling or waste water treatment, and higher final ethanol concentration, which means less energy for distillation. However, operating at high solids concentrations (20 to 30% dry matter) has some draw backs of which product inhibition of the cellulases by rapid accumulation of high glucose concentrations is one of the most critical. The process is therefore going to be operated as an SSF process. In order to ensure efficient mixing during the early stage of the hydrolysis, where viscosity is very high, special reactors designs has to be used. As the biomass gets liquefied it can be transferred to traditional fermentation tanks for SSF. Preferably, the duration of the liquefaction period should be minimised to reduce size of the special hydrolysis reactors and to start SSF as early as possible.
In this study various methods to increase the rate of liquefaction of hydrothermally pretreated wheat straw to a point where it can be pumped to conventional fermentor tanks is investigated. Besides studying the liquefaction using commercial enzymes, the ability to reduce liquefaction time by employing a thermostable endoglucanase (T. aurantiacus Cel5A with C. thermophilum Cel7A CBM) at elevated temperatures is investigated. The effect of temperature, enzyme loading and enzyme composition on the hydrolysis rate is examined. The liquefaction process is followed by measuring the change in viscosity, sugar production, and increase in number of reducing ends.
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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)