Biomass Pretreatment with Hydrothermal Explosion for Bioethanol Production

Abstract

For highly effective pretreatment of biomass for the production of ethanol, a hydrothermal explosion system was developed. Eucalyptus was selected as a sample hardwood biomass. Temperature and holding time dependence were studied to determine optimum conditions. Hydrothermal explosion and hydrothermal slow cooling were compared to confirm the explosion effect. Hydrothermal explosion showed higher sugar yield than the hydrothermal slow-cooling process, and sugar yield was 70% under optimized conditions. Dependence on enzyme concentration was also examined.