Title
Pretreatment of lignocellulosic wheat straw in ethanol-water co-solvents
Authors
MINGYU ZHANG K. S. HUI GUIFEN GONG K. N. HUI and LIZHU LIU

Received June 2, 2015
Published Volume 51 Issue 5-6 May-June
Keywords lignocellulosic biomass, pretreatment, ethanol-water co-solvents, holocellulose, lignin

Abstract
Pretreatment is the key process for lignocellulosic biomass conversion, which is necessary to alter the structure of biomass to make cellulose and hemicellulose more accessible to the enzymes that convert the carbohydrate polymers into fermentable sugars. The present study reports the use of 15 ml ethanol-water co-solvents (1:1, v/v) for the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass (1.5 g) to produce cellulosic residual solid under varying conditions of temperature (220-310 °C) and time (20-100 min). Kinetic analysis was performed to examine the decomposition behavior of biomass in the co-solvents. The results showed that the optimal conditions for the pretreatment were 250 °C and 40 min. The maximum yield of residual solid under the optimized pretreatment conditions was 49.6% (0.744 g), which consisted of 91.4% holocellulose (cellulose and hemicellulose). Microstructure analysis showed that the compact monolithic structure of biomass had decomposed into a loose filamentous structure.