Monday, April 30, 2012
Napoleon Ballroom C-D, 3rd fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
Economic biochemical conversion of cellulose to sugars necessitates minimal addition of water to biomass slurries during conversion, resulting in high-solids systems. Effective kinetic modeling requires understanding of heat- and mass-transport properties within these highly-concentrated slurries. Here we report on the convective and diffusive transport of tracer molecules in packed beds of biomass particles, which approximates a high-solids biomass slurry. The distribution of pore sizes within biomass particles were also measured using the same experimental setup. We show how pore-size distribution and mass transport relate this to the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis. In a separate study, the diffusive heat transport inside packed beds of biomass was measured, an important property for controlling the temperature of biomass undergoing conversion inside large reaction vessels.