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Poster Presentation 1-13
Optimizing Pretreatment Conditions to Enhance Ethanol Production from Poplar Biomass
M.J. Negro, P. Manzanares, I. Ballesteros, J.M. Oliva, A. Cabaņas and M. Ballesteros
DER-CIEMAT, Avda. Complutense, 22 28040-Madrid, Spain
Telephone: 32 (1) 346-62-61; Fax: 34 (1) 346-60-37; E-mail: m.ballesteros@ciemat.es
Pretreatment is considered the most expensive step in the operation cost of biomass to ethanol technologies. In general, features resulting in significant pretreatment cost reductions include: reduced milling, elimination of acid addition, achievement of high pentosan recovery, and production of a hydrolysate with a minimal inhibitory effect on fermentation. Hydrothermal treatments, such as steam explosion and liquid hot water (LHW), are attractive since these entail little or no addition of extraneous reagents. Steam explosion pretreatment can be effective at large particle size, but the low pentosan recovery in undegraded form as fermentable sugars or oligomers in the steam explosion is the main drawback, and the major challenge for pretreatment optimization. Nevertheless, the associated elimination of milling, lower costs for materials of construction, lower costs for process chemicals and eliminated gypsum disposal that derived from the elimination of acid addition is considered attractive enough for further research to optimize pretreatment conditions.
LWH pretreatment has proven to be a promising technology, but the available data in the literature on LHW are scarce and the optimal conditions of biomass pretreatment have yet to be determined.
In this study the effect of particle size, time and temperature on hemicellulose recovery and enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose after hydrothermal pretreatment, steam explosion and LHW pretreatment for poplar biomass has been investigated.
The work reports the compositional analysis of hydrolysate liquors and water-insoluble fiber, enzymatic digestibility and ethanol production by Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation Process of poplar pretreated at different experimental conditions.
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