Results
Title

Oxidative Lime Pretreatment of Alamo Switchgrass.

Authors

Falls, Matthew; Holtzapple, Mark

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that oxidative lime pretreatment is an effective delignification method that improves the enzymatic digestibility of many biomass feedstocks. The purpose of this work is to determine the recommended oxidative lime pretreatment conditions (reaction temperature, time, pressure, and lime loading) for Alamo switchgrass ( Panicum virgatum). Enzymatic hydrolysis of glucan and xylan was used to determine the performance of the 52 studied pretreatment conditions. The recommended condition (110°C, 6.89 bar O, 240 min, 0.248 g Ca(OH)/g biomass) achieved glucan and xylan overall yields (grams of sugar hydrolyzed/100 g sugar in raw biomass, 15 filter paper units (FPU)/g raw glucan) of 85.9 and 52.2, respectively. In addition, some glucan oligomers (2.6 g glucan recovered/100 g glucan in raw biomass) and significant levels of xylan oligomers (26.0 g xylan recovered/100 g xylan in raw biomass) were recovered from the pretreatment liquor. Combining a decrystallization technique (ball milling) with oxidative lime pretreatment further improved the overall glucan yield to 90.0 (7 FPU/g raw glucan).

Subjects

LIME (Minerals); OXIDATION; ENZYMES; DIGESTION; SWITCHGRASS; BIOMASS chemicals; GLUCANS; XYLANS

Publication

Applied Biochemistry & Biotechnology, 2011, Vol 165, Issue 2, p506

ISSN

0273-2289

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1007/s12010-011-9271-6