Theory, practice and prospects of X-ray and neutron scattering for lignocellulosic biomass characterization: towards understanding biomass pretreatment

Abstract

Efficient deconstruction of lignocelluosic biomass into fermentable sugar depends largely on the development of advanced biomass pretreatment technologies. Due to the highly heterogeneous nanoand microstructure of the plant cell walls, there is a lack of understanding with regards to interactions 10

Deconstruction of corncob by steam explosion pretreatment: Correlations between sugar conversion and recalcitrant structures

“…To this end, different pretreatment strategies are being developed to improve sugar yield from lignocellulosic biomass samples by increasing accessibility of enzymes to cellulose fibers (Meng & Ragauskas, 2014), decreasing lignin content (Singh, Shukla, Tiwari & Srivastava, 2014;Zeng, Zhao, Yang & Ding, 2014) or transforming native cellulose crystalline structure into less recalcitrant forms (Cheng et al, 2011;da Costa Sousa et al, 2016). However, suitable pretreatment technologies have not been established due in part to complex interactions between plant cell walls and biomass pretreatment as well as coupling between the biomass recalcitrant factors (Cheng, Zhang, Simmons & Singh, 2015). This requires further study of pretreatment processes to identify efficient ways to deconstruct biomass.…”

Rice Straw Cellulose Nanofibrils via Aqueous Counter Collision and Differential Centrifugation and Their Self-Assembled Structures

“…Although pure cellulose showed a small peak at 2θ of 34.5°, a reflection of the 004 plane of the periodic structure of the crystallite along the axial direction, 37 the peak disappeared in all four fractions. The loss of 004 peaks did not indicate the crystal structure change, as this peak is sensitive to the twisting and alignment of microfibrils and even the moisture content.…”

The influence of thermo-hygro-mechanical treatment on the micro- and nanoscale architecture of wood cell walls using small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering

“…Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) as a method capable of averaging over the volume in the X-ray beam is one of the very few techniques that can provide statistical information about the morphology, porosity and specific surface area of materials on the nanometre scale (Lichtenegger et al 2002(Lichtenegger et al , 2003Rennhofer et al 2014;Cheng et al 2015). SAXS patterns from wood can be regarded as arising from the electron density contrast in a two-phase composite, cellulose fibrils in a hemicellulose-lignin matrix, and with contributions from pores and other cavities at very small scattering angles (Jakob et al 1996).…”