Abstract
Plants have evolved their lignocellulosic cell walls through complex structural and chemical mechanisms to protect itself against microbial attacks, which makes native lignocellulosic biomass recalcitrant to enzymatic deconstruction. Pretreatment is a crucial step in the biological conversion of biomass as it can render structural changes in the plant cell wall to reduce the biomass recalcitrance, thus enhancing its sugar release performance. There have been many efforts to develop effective pretreatment technologies to overcome the biomass recalcitrance with a primary focus on the efficient conversion of biomass carbohydrates to liquid fuels, while lignin is significantly underutilized despite its bulk amount and high-value opportunities. In this study, the effects of two recent organosolv pretreatment strategies, co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation (CELF) and γ-Valerolactone (GVL) pretreatments, on physicochemical properties of poplar were investigated and compared with the effects of conventional ethanol organosolv pretreatment. Diverse physicochemical properties of biomass including chemical compositions, molecular weights of cellulose and lignin, aromatics and inter-unit linkages of lignin, lignin hydroxyl group contents, cellulose crystallinity, and accessible surface area of cellulose were analyzed before and after pretreatments. The results revealed how each organic solvent pretreatment system affected biomass structural characteristics and recalcitrance.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 112144 |
| Journal | Industrial Crops and Products |
| Volume | 146 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 2020 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. This research is partially supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science , through the Genomic Science Program, Office of Biological and Environmental Research , under FWP ERKP752 . The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purpose. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. This research is partially supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, through the Genomic Science Program, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, under FWP ERKP752. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purpose. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| DOE Public Access Plan | |
| United States Government | |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Science | |
| Biological and Environmental Research | FWP ERKP752 |
Keywords
- Biomass recalcitrance
- Biorefinery
- Co-solvent enhanced lignocellulosic fractionation
- GVL
- Lignin valorization
