Tuesday, April 20, 2010
8-44

Thermochemical hydrolysis of xylo-oligosaccharides produced from high-solids, corn stover pretreatment in a continuous reactor

Erik M. Kuhn1, Xiaowen Chen, Joe Shekiro1, Nick Nagle2, Melvin Tucker2, Stephen R. Decker3, and Richard T. Elander1. (1) National Bioenergy Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401, (2) National Bioenergy Center, NREL, 1617 Cole Blvd, MS3511, Golden, CO 80401, (3) Chemical and Biosciences Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 1617 Cole Blvd., Golden, CO 80401

The supply, political, and environmental concerns of petroleum based fuels has stimulated the need to produce liquid transportation fuels from renewable sources.  One research focus is the cost-competitive biochemical conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to biofuels.  Dilute-acid pretreatment hydrolyzes xylan into soluble monomers as well as soluble and insoluble oligomers.  The goal of this work is to thermochemically convert xylo-oligomers into monomers while minimizing xylose degradation.  Pretreated liquids and slurries produced in a high-solids, continuous, dilute-acid pretreatment reactor will be used in bench-scale xylo-oligomer conversion experiments.  To determine the statistically significant factors in thermochemical xylo-oligomer conversion, a factorial experimental design will be carried out involving reaction temperature, time, and catalyst loading.  Results from enzymatic hydrolysis experiments using xylanase to convert soluble and insoluble xylo-oligomers will also be presented.

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