Ethanol is one of the popular biofuels produced from lignocellulosic biomass, and has been widely used as a partial gasoline replacement as E85 (85%vol ethanol and 15%vol gasoline). Ethanol production involves two main stages: hydrolysis of polysaccharides to fermentable reducing sugars, and fermentation of sugars to alcohol. In lignocellulosic biomass, lignin is a complex polyphenolic polymer in the secondary cell walls of plants, and it impacts negatively on enzymatic hydrolysis in biofuel production. Catalytic Hydrogen Peroxide Pretreatment (CHP) is a method of referring the Fenton's chemistry in ligninolytic enzyme to improve the glucose and xylose conversion by delignification. Both of the cellulose and hemicelluloses are abundant sources of reducing sugars for alcohol fermentation, but many pretreatment (e.g. dilute acid pretreatment) remove hemicellulose, sacrificing xylose recovery to increase the cellulose accessible for hydrolysis. Therefore, CHP is an ideal eco-friendly pretreatment in neutral/low-alkaline pH with room temperature and atmosphere pressure to keep both of the cellulose and hemicellulose in polysaccharides to get high sugars recovery by oxidizing the lignin-polymer complexes in delignification, and producing high value lignin byproducts such as biomaterial and biodiesel.

Improvement of polysaccharides hydrolysis in lignocellulosic biomass treated by catalytic hydrogen peroxide pretreatment

244th National Meeting (2012)

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