Enhancement of enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass by Organosolv pretreatment with dilute acid solution

Abstract

Organosolv pretreatment is the process to frationation of lignocellulosic feedstocks to enhancement of enzymatic hydrolysis. This process has advantages that organic solvents are always easy to recover by distillation and recycled for pretreatment. The chemical recovery in organosolv pretreatment can isolate lignin as a solid material and carbohydrates as fermentable sugars. For the economic considerations, using of low-molecular-weight alcohols such as ethanol and methanol have been favored. When acid catalysts are added in organic solvent, the rate of delignification could be increased. Mineral acids (hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and phosphoric acid) are good catalysts to accelerate delignification and xylan degradation. In this study, the biomass was pretreated using 40∼50 wt% ethanol at 170∼180 °C during 20∼60 min. As a results, the enzymatic digestibility of 2-stage pretreatment of rigida using 50 wt% ethanol at 180 °C was 40.6% but that of 1-stage pretreatment was 55.4% on same conditions, therefore it is shown that the pretreatment using mixture of the organosolv and catalyst was effective than using them separately.