13-22: Advances in High Throughput Screening of Biomass Using Non-Thermal Methods

Previous research using alkaline peroxide pretreatment has found a relationship between batch temperature and reduction of lignin content in the residual solids.  The removal of lignin using this pretreatment method correlated with an increase in glucan and xylan conversion along with digestions using commercial enzyme preparations.  These methods have been scaled down to work on a high throughput scale and optimized for 96 well plate analysis using various biomass feedstocks.  Current high throughput methods using hydrothermal pretreatment have shown great success, however, these methods require expensive materials, specialized equipment to handle the high temperatures and pressures required, and complex plate handling and analysis to obtain high quality results.  Alkaline peroxide pretreatment serves to compliment current methods and offer simpler methods for high throughput screening, while still maintaining high precision and accuracy.  Here we compare results from high throughput hydrothermal pretreatment and enzyme hydrolysis using several biomass feedstocks in multiple large sample sets.