Nature has designed   biomass to resist degradation by enzymes and pretreatment processes have to be chosen strategically to deal with this recalcitrance.  For acidic pretreatments, such as steam and organosolv, both the xylan component of agricultural and hardwood biomass and the lignin component of softwood biomass, play a critical role in influencing the ease of hydrolysis of the resulting pretreated substrates. To overcome the compromise between maximizing sugar recovery and hydrolysis at minimal enzyme loadings, different strategies are required.  We have shown that the selective removal of hemicellulose during pretreatment does not facilitate hydrolysis of softwoods substrates at low enzyme loadings due to the residual lignin which must be removed via a post treatment.  However, for  hardwood and agricultural biomass, one and two stage pretreatments using various acidic catalysts including SO2 and oxalic acid  resulted in the recovery of more than 80% of the xylan component while maximizing hydrolysis yields at enzyme loadings as low as 3-7 FPU/g of cellulose.

Biomass specific pretreatment strategties to improve sugar recovery while facilitating enzymatic hydrolysis at minimal enzyme loadings

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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