New Strategies in Treatment and Enzymatic Processes

Abstract

Ethanol can be made from lignocellulosic biomass, a promising replacement for fossil fuels. The bioethanol production process is divided into three basic unit operations. Conventional and well-established corn-to-ethanol technology can be cost competitive with the cellulosic ethanol process. For the pre-treatment of bagasse, steam explosion without a catalyst and a mixture of sulfuric and oxalic acids were used. The slab was submitted to enzymatic hydrolysis in the first scheme without any additional treatments like washing or solid-liquid separation. According to a study, post-treating bagasse with a pressure filtering process improved the amount of sugar that might be produced for ethanol. The total cellulosic ethanol process can be made successful. The effect of varying concentrations of sodium sulphite and its effect on both process configurations were also studied. The study provided an 8-10% increase in overall enzymatic efficiency as compared to the control substrate.