Tuesday, April 20, 2010
8-92

Evaluation of pine biomass varieties for bioethanol production

Sunkyu Park1, Ved P. Naithani1, Hasan Jameel1, Ross Whetten2, Fikrek Isik2, and Ewellyn Capanema1. (1) Wood and Paper Science, North Carolina State University, 2820 Faucette Drive, Raleigh, NC 27695, (2) Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695

Development of a biofuels industry in North Carolina will be dependent on the availability of a reliable portfolio of biomass feedstocks.  Loblolly pine plantations can be an important component of that portfolio, because (a) the species is indigenous to the region and grow on marginal soils, b) the species has been subjected to genetic improvement for biomass production, disease resistance, and form for over 50 years, and (c) there are currently over 2 million acres of genetically improved loblolly pine plantations across the state.  It is difficult to envision a biofuels industry in North Carolina that does not use loblolly pine as an important feedstock.  However, most biochemical conversion processes have showed that the sugar recovery from softwood is 20-30% lower than that from hardwoods.  In this study, it was expected that with the right variety of loblolly pine, the sugar recovery may approach that of hardwood.  To examine the potential, increment cores were taken from 187 different pine varieties and 23 pine varieties were selected based on chemical and physical properties detected by NIR spectrometry.  Three pretreatment processes followed by enzymatic hydrolysis for the conversion of pine biomass were performed to identify loblolly pine varieties that could be easier to process.  The technologies include the NCSU developed alkaline process, acid pretreatment, and organosolv pretreatment developed by Lignol.  Difference among the pine varieties will be discussed for three pretreatment schemes. 

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