Poster Presentation 1B-29

Enzymatic Hydrolysis Models for Application to Cellulose Prepared by Leading Pretreatment Technologies

Rajeev Kumar* and Charles E. Wyman

Thayer School of Engineering

Dartmouth College

8000 Cummings Hall

Hanover, New Hampshire 03755

Phone: (603) 646-3193

Fax: (603) 646-2277

E-mail: Charles.Wyman@Dartmouth.edu

Cellulosic biomass must be properly prepared to achieve cost effective conversion of cellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals by biological routes, and various research groups have devised several promising new pretreatment technologies to address this need. However, their chemical consequences vary significantly with some removing hemicellulose (dilute acid and neutral pH), others removing lignin (liquid ammonia and lime), still others removing neither (ammonia fiber explosion), and removal of both being achieved as well (flowthrough with or without dilute acid). Nonetheless, all result in highly digestible cellulose, and we seek to better understand the relationship between enzymatic hydrolysis and substrate features for these pretreatment approaches. As part of this research, kinetic models reported in the literature will be compared to determine how well they can account for enhancement in enzymatic hydrolysis by these different pretreatment technologies. We also seek to understand how pretreated biomass features and the mode of operation (batch, continuous, and fed-batch) for enzymatic hydrolysis could affect performance.