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6-05: Analysis of 13C enriched corn stover by water-only flow-through pretreatment

Tuesday, May 3, 2011: 10:30 AM
Willow A-B, 2nd fl (Sheraton Seattle)
Marcus B. Foston, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, BioEnergy Science Center, Atlanta, GA, Heather L. McKenzie, Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering, Center for Environmental Research and Technology, University of California, Riverside, BioEnergy Science Center, Riverside, CA, Charles Wyman, Center for Environmental Research and Technology, Bourns College of Engineering, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA and Art J. Ragauskas, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
The economics of biofuel production are heavily dependent on the recovery of fermentable sugars from hemicellulose and cellulose and the associated energy costs.  The very properties that make hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin so useful as structural biopolymers in plant cell wall make them difficult to deconstruct.  In an effort to elucidate the nature of plant cell wall recalcitrance high temperature water-only continuous flow pretreatment was used to fractionate the cell wall of 13C enriched corn stover.  The use of flow-through pretreatment will allow the fractionation of the cell wall to be tracked as a function of time.  The kinetics and sequence of this fractionation should correlate to the relative level of structural rigidity and recalcitrance of the eluted chemical moiety.  Fractions of the reactor effluent will be characterized by HPLC, 13C NMR, 13C DOSY NMR, and UV/Vis spectroscopy to determine the chemical composition, structure, and molecular weight of the biopolymers released from the cell wall. 
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