Mild pretreatment of yellow poplar biomass using sequential dilute acid and enzymatically-generated peracetic acid to enhance cellulase accessibility

Hyeong Rae Lee, Romas J. Kazlauskas, Tai Hyun Park

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

Biomass contains cellulose, xylan and lignin in a complex interwoven structure that hinders enzymatic hydrolysis of the cellulose. To separate these components in yellow poplar biomass, we sequentially pretreated with dilute sulfuric acid and enzymatically-generated peracetic acid. In the first step, the dilute acid with microwave heating (140°C, 5 min) hydrolyzed 90% of xylan. The xylose yield in hydrolysate after dilute acid pretreatment was 83.1%. In the second step, peracetic acid (60°C, 6 h) removed up to 80% of lignin. This sequential pretreatment fractionated biomass into xylan and lignin, leaving a solid residue enriched in cellulose (~80%). The sequential pretreatment enhanced enzymatic digestibility of the cellulase by removal of the other components in biomass. The glucose yield after enzymatic hydrolysis was 90.5% at a low cellulase loading (5 FPU/g of glucan), which is 1.6 and 18 times higher than for dilute acid-pretreated biomass and raw biomass, respectively. This novel sequential pretreatment with dilute acid and peracetic acid efficiently separates the three major components of yellow poplar biomass, and reduces the amount of cellulase needed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)405-412
Number of pages8
JournalBiotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering
Volume22
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2017

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This study was supported by a grant from National Research Foundation of Korea under the World Class University program (R322009000102130).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, The Korean Society for Biotechnology and Bioengineering and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.

Keywords

  • biomass
  • dilute acid
  • enzymatic accessibility
  • peracetic acid
  • pretreatment

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