Monday, May 2, 2011
Grand Ballroom C-D, 2nd fl (Sheraton Seattle)
Miscanthus and Saccharum are energy canes capable of producing high quality lignocellulosic biomass for bioethanol production. However, the conversion of this biomass into fuel ethanol has not been investigated in depth and depends to a great extent on the pretreatment technique. Ozonolysis is a novel pretreatment method capable of enhancing biomass digestibility with minimal degradation of the carbohydrate components and generation of chemical waste streams. Ozone - a powerful oxidant forms highly reactive free hydroxyl ions upon decomposition thus degrading lignin in the absence of inhibitory degradation products such as furfural and HMF. This comparative study investigates the most efficient way to delignify 4 energy cane varieties by subjecting them to ozone at 3 concentrations in different reactor configurations. Efficiency of the different pretreatment conditions is determined by measuring the reducing sugars generated after enzymatic hydrolysis with Cellic CTec2. It is expected that the results of this study will help in the development of a pretreatment process that provides higher specificity towards lignin removal compared with other delignifying agents/pretreatments while being cost effective. (Research done as part of this study is being reviewed for an invention disclosure)