Comparison of Microbial Inhibition and Enzymatic Hydrolysis Rates of Liquid and Solid Fractions Produced from Pretreatment of Biomass with Carbonic Acid and Liquid Hot Water

Abstract

This research quantified the enzymatic digestibility of the solid component and the microbial inhibition of the liquid component of pretreated aspen wood and corn stover hydrolysates. Products of liquid hot water and carbonic acid pretreatment were compared. Pretreatment temperatures tested ranged from 180 to 220 degrees C, and reaction times were varied between 4 and 64 min. Both microbial inhibition rates and enzymatic hydrolysis rates showed no difference between pretreatments containing carbonic acid and those not containing no carbonic acid. Microbial inhibition increased as the reaction severity increased, but only above a midpoint severity parameter of 200 degrees C for 16 min. Both the rates and yields of enzymatic hydrolysis displayed an increase from the lowest tested reaction severity to the highest tested reaction severity.

Methane production in response to sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide assisted hydrothermal pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse

“…The severity factor is a measure of the pretreatment intensity in hydrothermal processes and it allows comparing the results of experiments carried out under different conditions (Rocha et al, 2013). It has extensively been used to report pretreatment severity in the literature (Overend et al, 1987;Chum et al, 1990;Bouchard et al, 1991;Abatzoglou et al, 1992;Jollez et al, 1994;Montané et al, 1994;van Walsu, 2001;Yourchisin and Peter Van Walsum, 2004;Kabel et al, 2007;Pedersen and Meyer, 2010;Agbor et al, 2011;Lee and Jeffries, 2011;Temiz and Akpinar, 2016). The generalized impact of pretreatment time and temperature on lignocellulosic composition is first proposed by Overend et al (Overend et al, 1987) The fitted value (14.75) is based on activation energy, assuming pseudo first order kinetics (Carvalheiro et al, 2009).…”