Kinetic characterization of flowthrough pretreatment

To date, many potentially economical and scalable pretreatment options for biorefineries are aqueous based. Thus, understanding biomass interactions in aqueous systems at various temperature, pressure, and pH combination is the first step of characterizing a water-based pretreatment option — whether it employs another chemical or not - and especially in terms of water as a catalyst and its solvation effects on biomass degradation reaction kinetics, mass transfer, and solubility. In this study, we examined the pretreatment of biomass (e.g. poplar, lodgepole pine) in a flowthrough system at various temperatures (140-280°C), times (0-60 minutes), pH (1-14), and flow rates (0-100 mL/minute) to assess the influence of these factors on degradation of biomass to sugars, lignin, and their degradation derives. In addition, the chemical transformations of the pretreated biomass revealed the pathways that disrupt biomass recalcitrance for the viable generation of reactive intermediates. The relationship between pretreatment conditions and process configurations to arrive at a satisfactory mechanism to explain how pretreatment conditions affect total sugar and lignin yields from biomass will be addressed in this presentation.