Using a mediator system to increase the delignification of sugarcane residues with fungal enzymes

Abstract

Industrial residues are resources that generate regional energy security but they have not been sufficiently valued. In southern Colombia, the sugar cane sector produces approximately 9'000000 T/year of residues, mostly represented by tops and leaves. Delignification is a critical step in the process of obtaining ethanol from these residues. The removal of lignin using extracellular enzyme extracts and mediators has not been widely studied. Therefore, a methodology was developed to extract, a cocktail of enzymes consisting of laccase, manganese peroxidase (MnP) and lignoperoxidase (LiP) from Pleurotus ostreatus, which was cultivated by solid substrate fermentation. The extracts with two mediators: 1) ABTS: 2,2'-azino-bis-3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic-acid and 2) vanillin, were tested on two different types of residues: untreated residues and pretreated residues with ultrasound. It was found that the crude enzyme extract contained laccase (0.432 U/mL), LiP (0.116 U/mL) and MnP (0.025 U/mL) activity. Additionally, the results confirmed that this extract was capable of removing 52.7% of lignin from ultrasound pretreated sugar cane residues and ABTS as the laccase mediator. It is important to highlight that the results obtained were very promising mainly if a more concentrated extracellular extract can be used.