Characterization of white poplar and eucalyptus after ionic liquid pretreatment as a function of biomass loading using X-ray diffraction and small angle neutron scattering

Abstract

A systematic study was performed to understand interactions among biomass loading during ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment, biomass type and biomass structures. White poplar and eucalyptus samples were pretreated using 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EmimOAc) at 110°C for 3h at biomass loadings of 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25wt%. All of the samples were chemically characterized and tested for enzymatic hydrolysis. Physical structures including biomass crystallinity and porosity were measured by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and small angle neutron scattering (SANS), respectively. SANS detected pores of radii ranging from ∼25 to 625Å, enabling assessment of contributions of pores with different sizes to increased porosity after pretreatment. Contrasting dependences of sugar conversion on white poplar and eucalyptus as a function of biomass loading were observed and cellulose crystalline structure was found to play an important role.

Effect of Ionic Liquid Pretreatment on the Porosity of Pine: Insights from Small-Angle Neutron Scattering, Nitrogen Adsorption Analysis, and X-ray Diffraction

“…Surprisingly, it keeps increasing with increasing biomass concentration until 20 wt % . Biomass porosity increases as a result of removal and/or redistribution of biomass components and swelling of biomass samples during pretreatment. , In the previous work, a lower IL-to-biomass ratio during IL pretreatment led to removal of a lesser amount of biomass components and therefore smaller porosity . As shown in the right axis of Figure d, the percentage of recovered solids after pretreatment slightly increases from 80 to 84 wt % with increasing biomass concentrations, consistent with prior work.…”

“…SANS and USANS can also track changes in structure of biomass samples during the course of enzymatic digestion, thus offering a unique tool to understand biomass pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis. 14,15 Relative changes in porosity of white poplar and eucalyptus after ionic liquid pretreatment were analyzed by SANS in a previous work. 15 In this study, changes in porosity of pine samples as a function of ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment conditions were studied using both SANS and nitrogen adsorption measurements, which demonstrated the applicability of SANS to the study of the porosity of biomass samples.…”

Preparation of a Cellulase-imitated Solid Acid Catalyst With High Acid Density and Its Evaluation for Hydrolysis of Cellulose

“…During this process, the crystalline form of cellulose is transformed, and the hydrogen bonds between molecules are broken and rearranged, reducing the crystallinity of cellulose and increasing the pores (Yuan et al 2017). Metal ions are often used to promote hydrolysis to pretreat cellulose because the empty orbitals of metal ions can combine with the lone pair of electrons on the β-1,4 glycosidic bond oxygen atom of cellulose (Li et al 2015), thereby activating the carbon-oxygen bond, which is conducive to cellulose hydrolysis.…”

Rhizobacteria Mediate the Phytotoxicity of a Range of Biorefinery‐Relevant Compounds

“…Concerns over oil prices as well as the harm caused by fossil fuel consumption have accelerated bioeconomy-related research (Mortimer 2019). This includes plants genetically engineered to synthesize valuable compounds (Zhang et al 2015;Eudes et al 2016aEudes et al , 2016b, methods developed to isolate those chemicals or intermediates and a maximum amount of accessible carbon from plant biomass (Neupane et al 2017;Pérez-Pimienta et al 2017;Yuan et al 2017), as well as microorganisms engineered to efficiently convert plant-derived carbon into desirable products (Phelan et al 2015;Goh et al 2018;Sasaki et al 2019; Figure 1).…”