Cellulose hydrolysis processes using concentrated acid usually involve two steps in order to obtain high glucose yields. The first step (pre-treatment) decrystallizes cellulose while the second step (post-hydrolysis) converts the amorphous cellulose to glucose. The two-step process developed by the Industrial Research Chair on Cellulosic Ethanol and Biocommodities and its industrial partner CRB Innovations Inc., includes an intermediate partial neutralization step, whose purpose is to decrease the amount of dilution water to be added for post-hydrolysis thus minimizing handling costs. In this work, the effect of several operating parameters on the glucose yield of this process was investigated using triticale cellulose and the best conditions yielding fermentable glucose (close to 100%) were determined. These conditions involve pre-treating cellulose at 30°C using 72 wt% H2SO4 with a H2SO4/dry cellulose mass ratio of 36 over 2 h, followed by a partial neutralization using 20 wt% NaOH at an H+/OH− molar ratio of 2.3–2.5 and a post-hydrolysis at 121°C for 10 min.HIGHLIGHTS
Influence of operating parameters on the glucose yield have been investigated.Conditions for producing cellulosic glucose with yields close to 100% have been identified.
One-dimensional channel molecular sieves were synthesized and tested as hydrocarbon traps using toluene and ethylene as heavy and light HC probe molecules, respectively. Binary TPD traces of these two gases allow a systematic comparison of the adsorption/desorption behavior of molecular sieves. These results show a drastic difference between molecular sieves with 10 oxygen ring apertures (10R) and 12R. Ammonia TPD traces of the series of 12R molecular sieves allow to rationalize the different ethylene/toluene TPD traces.
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