Tuesday, April 20, 2010
8-98

Liquid hot water pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of sunflower stalks

Manuel J. Díaz, Cristóbal Cara, Encarnación Ruiz, Inmaculada Romero, Manuel Moya, and Eulogio Castro. Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Jaen, Campus Las Lagunillas, Jaen, 23071, Spain

Sunflower is one of the main sources of oil-seeds worldwide, representing more than 20 million hectares of cultivated land. Sunflower stalks, left behind on the fields, are agricultural residues containing on average 34% cellulose, 20% hemicelluloses and 15% lignin (dry basis). Today, these residues have no practical application and are eliminated usually by burning with an associated cost and environmental concerns. Instead, conversion of this material into fuel ethanol has been proposed. This work deals with liquid hot water pretreatment using sunflower stalks as raw material. Pretreatment temperatures ranging from 180 to 200ºC for 5 min were used as main variable. After pretreatment, the amount of insoluble material recovered ranged from 53 to 67% depending on pretreatment temperature. This pretreated material was further submitted to enzymatic hydrolysis by an enzyme commercial complex. The liquid fraction issued from pretreatment was analyzed for sugar and degradation products. The influence of the pretreatment on the fermentable sugar generation is discussed.

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