Tuesday, April 20, 2010
10-22

Synergistic action of Trichoderma reesei and Penicillium viridicatum’s enzymatic extracts on sugarcane bagasse for glucose production

Rodolfo Travaini, M. Boscolo, E. Gomes, and R. Da-Silva. Chemistry and Environmental Science, UNESP, Rua Cristovao Colombo, 2265, Sao Jose do Rio Preto, Brazil

In the last few years, the number of studies that describes experiments for enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass for fermentable sugar production significantly increased. This is result of the many advantages of this method when compared with the acid hydrolysis, and also because this method is in agreement with the new concepts of green chemistry. The main barrier of this method is the low efficiency, or inefficiency, of the enzymes on the biomass substrates, that makes the process expensive and unviable economically. In this work, a new way for solution was proposed using two fungi enzymatic extracts with different enzymatic profiles. Many works have reported the Trichoderma reesei QM9414 as an excellent producer of the cellulolytic enzymatic complex, however this fungus is poor in production of β-glucosidase, that have a crucial paper and is the regulatory point on the kinetic of hydrolysis. To resolve this technological problem of this fungus we use the association of extracts of our isolated Penicillium viridicatum RFC3, that don’t have good production of cellulolytic enzymes, but have a high β-glucosidase production. Extract of P. viridicatum: 3,25U/mL of β-glucosidase; T. reesei: 0,24U/mL of filter paper. The assays were made with the separated extracts, 50%/50% (v/v) and 25%/75% (v/v) and vice versa, and the hydrolysates were quantified by HLPC. The 50%/50% assay was the best with the higher glucose production, stating that the synergistic actions of extracts provides conditions for contour the enzymatic and technologic barriers that prevents an efficient biomass hydrolysis, stimulating new studies in this direction.