Comparison between liquid and solid acids catalysts on reducing sugars conversion from furfural residues via pretreatments

Insight on adsorption of cellulase on wet ground corncob residues and its evaluation by multivariate linear analysis

Understanding the adsorption behavior and the interaction between substrates and enzymes are critical to improving enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency and reducing bioconversion cost. Herein, the adsorption of cellulase on wet ground corncob residues was studied, and the effects of main characteristics of wet ground corncob residues on adsorption capacity were quantitatively analyzed with the combination of principal component analysis and multiple linear regression models. The results showed that the adsorption of cellulase on wet ground corncob residues was fitted well with Langmuir isotherm adsorption and pseudo second-order kinetics model, the adsorption rate and adsorption capacity were greatly enhanced with increasing grinding time; the multiple linear regression models describing the relationship between main characteristics of corncob residues and adsorption capacity to cellulase were established; the significance of these characteristics were in the following order: average particle size, crystallinity index, specific surface area, surface lignin concentration, water retention value, and surface charge density.

Comparative study on different pretreatment on enzymatic hydrolysis of corncob residues

Under the situation of increasingly severe challenge of energy consumption, it is of great importance to make full use of bioresources such as forestry and agricultural residues. Herein, the corncob residues generated after processing corncob were enzymatically hydrolyzed to yield fermentable sugars. To overcome the recalcitrance of corncob residues, three kinds of pretreatment methods, i.e., sulfonation, PFI refining, and wet grinding, were applied; their effects on enzymatic hydrolysis and main characteristics of corncob residues substrate were investigated. The results showed that the enzymatic digestibility of the substrate was greatly enhanced by employing each method. The wet grinding exhibited obvious advantages, e.g., the conversion yield of cellulose to glucose and glucose concentration reached 96.7% and 32.2 g/L after 59 h of enzymatic hydrolysis, respectively. The improvement in enzymatic hydrolysis was mainly attributed to the altered characteristics of the substrate such as swelling ability, specific surface area, and particle size and distribution.

A Review on the Transformation of Furfural Residue for Value-Added Products

As a by-product of lignocellulosic depolymerization for furfural production, furfural residue (FR) is composed of residual cellulose, lignin, humic acid, and other small amounts of materials, which have high reuse value. However, due to the limitation of furfural production scale and production technology, the treatment of FR has many problems such as high yield, concentrated stacking, strong acidity, and difficult degradation. This leads to the limited treatment methods and high treatment cost of furfural residue. At present, most of the furfural enterprises can only be piled up at will, buried in soil, or directly burned. The air, soil, and rivers are polluted and the ecological balance is destroyed. Therefore, how to deal with furfural residue reasonably needs to be solved. In this review, value-added products for furfural residue conversion are described in detail in the fields of soil culture, catalytic hydrolysis, thermal decomposition, and porous adsorption. The future studies reporting the FR to convert value-added products could find guidance from this review to achieve specific goals.