cellulase and sodium-sulfide

Process simulation and lab trials were carried out to demonstrate and confirm the efficiency of the concept that recycling hydrolysate at low total solid enzymatic hydrolysis is one of the options to increase the sugar concentration without mixing problems. Higher sugar concentration can reduce the capital cost for fermentation and distillation because of smaller retention volume. Meanwhile, operation cost will also decrease for less operating volume and less energy required for distillation. With the computer simulation, time and efforts can be saved to achieve the steady state of recycling process, which is the scenario for industrial production. This paper, to the best of our knowledge, is the first paper discussing steady-state saccharification with recycling of the filtrate form enzymatic hydrolysis to increase sugar concentration. Recycled enzymes in the filtrate (15-30% of the original enzyme loading) resulted in 5-10% higher carbohydrate conversion compared to the case in which recycled enzymes were denatured. The recycled hydrolysate yielded 10% higher carbohydrate conversion compared to pure sugar simulated hydrolysate at the same enzyme loading, which indicated hydrolysis by-products could boost enzymatic hydrolysis. The high sugar concentration (pure sugar simulated) showed inhibition effect, since about 15% decrease in carbohydrate conversion was observed compared with the case with no sugar added. The overall effect of hydrolysate recycling at WinGEMS simulated steady-state conditions with 5% total solids was increasing the sugar concentration from 35 to 141 g/l, while the carbohydrate conversion was 2% higher for recycling at steady state (87%) compared with no recycling strategy (85%). Ten percent and 15% total solid processes were also evaluated in this study.

Topics: Biomass; Carbohydrates; Carbonates; Cellulase; Cellulose; Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; Computer Simulation; Endo-1,4-beta Xylanases; Ethanol; Fermentation; Hydrolysis; Lignin; Recycling; Sulfides; Sulfuric Acids; Wood; Xylans

In this study, a strategy to reduce enzyme dosage is evaluated by applying two post-treatments, oxygen delignification and mechanical refining. The sugar conversion for GL12 substrates was increased from 51.5% to 77.9% with post-treatments at the enzyme dosage of 10 FPU. When the amount of enzyme was reduced to 5 FPU with post-treatments, the conversion of 71.8% was obtained, which was significant higher than the conversion without any post-treatment using 10 FPU (51.5%). This clearly demonstrates the benefit of post-treatments that allows more than 50% of enzyme reduction at the same level of enzymatic conversion. Enzyme-accessible surface area and pore volume were evaluated by Simons' staining and DSC thermoporometry methods, and strong correlations were found with the sugar conversion.

Topics: beta-Glucosidase; Biofuels; Biomass; Bioreactors; Carbonates; Cellulase; Endo-1,4-beta Xylanases; Ethanol; Fermentation; Hydrolysis; Industrial Microbiology; Lignin; Monosaccharides; Oxygen; Porosity; Sulfides; Temperature; Wood