Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-18-2020
Department
Department of Chemical Engineering
Abstract
Lignocellulosic materials are plant-derived feedstocks, such as crop residues (e.g., corn stover, rice straw, and sugar cane bagasse) and purpose-grown energy crops (e.g., miscanthus, and switchgrass) that are available in large quantities to produce biofuels, biochemicals, and animal feed. Plant polysaccharides (i.e., cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin) embedded within cell walls are highly recalcitrant towards conversion into useful products. Ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX) is a thermochemical pretreatment that increases accessibility of polysaccharides to enzymes for hydrolysis into fermentable sugars. These released sugars can be converted into fuels and chemicals in a biorefinery. Here, we describe a laboratory-scale batch AFEX process to produce pretreated biomass on the gram-scale without any ammonia recycling. The laboratory-scale process can be used to identify optimal pretreatment conditions (e.g., ammonia loading, water loading, biomass loading, temperature, pressure, residence time, etc.) and generates sufficient quantities of pretreated samples for detailed physicochemical characterization and enzymatic/microbial analysis. The yield of fermentable sugars from enzymatic hydrolysis of corn stover pretreated using the laboratory-scale AFEX process is comparable to pilot-scale AFEX process under similar pretreatment conditions. This paper is intended to provide a detailed standard operating procedure for the safe and consistent operation of laboratory-scale reactors for performing AFEX pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass.
Publication Title
Journal of Visualized Experiments
Recommended Citation
Chundawat, S. P.,
Pal, R.,
Zhao, C.,
Campbell, T.,
Teymouri, F.,
Videto, J.,
Nielson, C.,
Wieferich, B.,
Sousa, L.,
Dale, B.,
Balan, V.,
Chipkar, S.,
Aguado, J.,
Burke, E.,
&
Ong, R. G.
(2020).
Ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX) pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass.
Journal of Visualized Experiments(158).
http://doi.org/10.3791/57488
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/1858
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Version
Publisher's PDF
Publisher's Statement
Copyright © 2020 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.3791/57488