Effects of fibrillation on the wood fibers' enzymatic hydrolysis enhanced by mechanical refining

Coproduction of xylooligosaccharides and monosaccharides from hardwood by a combination of acetic acid pretreatment, mechanical refining and enzymatic hydrolysis

Sequential biorefinery treatments of acetic acid (HAC) pretreatment, Papir Forsknings Institutet (PFI) milling and enzymatic hydrolysis were demonstrated for coproduction of xylooligosaccharides (XOS) and fermentable monosaccharides. Results indicated that 36.2% XOS (50.8% X2-X3) and 17.0% low DP xylans were achieved using a HAC pretreatment with a combined severity factor of 0.78. The HAC pretreatment resulted in a XOS-rich prehydrolyzate with a low molecular weight of 1.28 kDa. The endo-xylanase hydrolysis was conducted on the pretreatment liquor to elevate XOS yield and the content of higher-value X2-X3. Moreover, fermentable glucose production from the pretreated residue increased by 2.3 folds when introducing an additional step of PFI refining prior to enzymatic digestion. Properties of substrate including cellulose accessibility, crystallite size, crystalline index and water retention value were in close relationships with enzymatic digestibility. The implementation of proposed biorefinery process will give more insights into the efficient construction of a wood-derived sugar platform.

Combination of hydrothermal and chemi-mechanical pretreatments to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of poplar branches and insights on cellulase adsorption

An integration of different pretreatments is important to overcome recalcitrance and realize efficient bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass. This study aims at the effects of combination of hydrothermal pretreatment and different chemi-mechanical pretreatments on enzymatic hydrolysis, and understanding the enzymes adsorption mechanism. The combination of hydrothermal and chemi-mechanical pretreatments effectively improved the enzymatic hydrolysis of poplar substrates, in which the enzymatic hydrolysis of substrates pretreated by hydrothermal pretreatment + Fenton pretreatment + mechanical refining (HFM) was the highest (92.39% of glucose conversion yield, and 20.88 g/L of glucose concentration). The substrates' main characteristics were obviously changed after combined pretreatments, such as swelling ability and specific surface area of substrates were increased. The Langmuir adsorption model (R² > 0.98) and pseudo second-order adsorption kinetic model (R²≈1) were well suitable to describe the adsorption of enzymes on substrates, meanwhile the adsorption mechanism was summarized.

Review on Nonconventional Fibrillation Methods of Producing Cellulose Nanofibrils and Their Applications

The production of cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) continues to receive considerable attention because of their desirable material characteristics for a variety of consumer applications. There are, however, challenges that remain in transitioning CNFs from research to widespread adoption in the industrial sectors, including production cost and material performance. This Review covers CNFs produced from nonconventional fibrillation methods as a potential alternative solution. Pretreating biomass by biological, chemical, mechanical, or physical means can render plant feedstocks more facile for processing and thus lower energy requirements to produce CNFs. CNFs from nonconventional fibrillation methods have been investigated for various applications, including films, composites, aerogels, and Pickering emulsifiers. Continued research is needed to develop protocols to standardize the characterization (e.g., degree of fibrillation) of the lignocellulosic fibrillation processes and resulting CNF products to make them more attractive to the industry for specific product applications.

Probing Effect of Papirindustriens Forskningsinstitut (PFI) Refining on Aggregation Structure of Cellulose: Crystal Packing and Hydrogen-Bonding Network

Supramolecular structure is the critical factor that affects the properties of cellulosic fibers. This article studied the action of Papirindustriens forskningsinstitut (PFI) refining on the molecular aggregation and hydrogen bonding network, and tried to explore the relationship between the crystal packing and hydrogen-bonding network in cellulosic fibers. The results showed that the polymorph, H-bonding distance, and H-bonding energy of various H-bonds remained almost unchanged, while the crystalline index, crystallite size, and content of various H-bonds changed with refining. Therein, the content of the inter-molecular O(6)H⋯O(3') H-bonds was significantly correlated with the crystalline index that was obtained in intensities of the XRD peaks. The Pearson correlation coefficient between them was 0.888 (p < 0.05) for softwood fibers and 0.889 (p < 0.05) for hardwood fibers, respectively. It can be concluded that the variations of accessibility, swelling, and fibrillation were closely related to the supramolecular structure and the intermolecular H-bonds play an important role in the crystal packing of cellulose.

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.

Improving enzymatic hydrolysis of mechanically refined poplar branches with assistance of hydrothermal and Fenton pretreatment

The combination of different pretreatment methods can effectively overcome recalcitrance of lignocellulosic biomass to ensure its highly efficient conversion into bio-based products. In this study, the combined pretreatments of chemical methods (hydrothermal treatment and Fenton treatment) with mechanical refining were used to improve the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of poplar branches. The results indicated that hydrothermal pretreatment and Fenton pretreatment can effectively improve the enzymatic hydrolysis of poplar substrates, e.g., the maximum glucose conversion yield and glucose concentration reached 92.4% and 20.8 g/L, respectively. The pre-hydrolysates contained some valuable components such as monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, acetic acid, furfural, and hydroxymethylfurfural. The main characteristics (specific surface area, water retention value, fines content, and surface lignin concentration) of poplar substrates were obviously changed by the combined pretreatment, which benefit the enzymatic hydrolysis.

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 comparative study on enzyme adsorption and hydrolytic performance of different scale corn stover by two-step kinetics

To investigate the effect of two-step kinetics on enzyme adsorption and hydrolytic properties of different structural substrates at low enzyme doses. The two-step kinetic experiments of ultrafine grinding (UGCS) and sieve-based grinding corn stover (SGCS) were performed respectively with enzyme loading of 2.5 + 2.5 FPU/g and 5 + 5 FPU/g. The different performance of these two samples were illustrated by characterizing the particle size distribution, SEM and XPS. The results showed that ultrafine grinding can promote the structural properties which is beneficial to adsorption and hydrolysis. The main factors influencing adsorption kinetics are enzyme concentration and the surface cellulose amount. Pre-adsorbed enzyme has no effects on the subsequent enzyme adsorption quantity but produces some small competitive and impeditive effects. The hydrolysis kinetics mainly depend on the structure of the substrate and its complexity of hydrolysis. The two-step hydrolysis didn't promote the total sugar yield under the same enzyme concentration, but the first step contributed more to the total sugar yield.

Enhancing enzyme-aided production of fermentable sugars from poplar pulp in the presence of non-ionic surfactants

Addition of surfactants to enzymatic hydrolysis has been reported to enhance the hydrolytic potential of enzymes in the bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the effects of four non-ionic surfactants (PEG4000, PEG8000, TitronX-100, and Tween80) on the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis of steam-pretreated poplar using a commercial cellulase preparation (Cellic® CTec2). Statistical discriminant analysis at four variable factors (surfactant type, surfactant concentration, hydrolysis time, and substrate consistency) revealed that enzymatic hydrolysis was significantly enhanced in the presence of PEG4000, with 19.2% increase in glucose yield over control without surfactant, whereas ANOVA test indicated substrate consistency and hydrolysis time as the most significant factors (P < 0.05). Hydrolysis of poplar pulp at 5% w/w pulp consistency with CTec2 in presence of 1% w/w PEG4000 produced the highest glucose yield of 58.5% after 96 h reaction time.

Toward an understanding of the increase in enzymatic hydrolysis by mechanical refining

BACKGROUND

Mechanical refining is a low-capital and well-established technology used in pulp and paper industry to improve fiber bonding for product strength. Refining can also be applied in a biorefinery context to overcome the recalcitrance of pretreated biomass by opening up the biomass structure and modifying substrate properties (e.g., morphology, particle size, porosity, crystallinity), which increases enzyme accessibility to substrate and improves carbohydrate conversion. Although several characterization methods have been used to identify the changes in substrate properties, there is no systematic approach to evaluate the extent of fiber cell wall disruption and what physical properties can explain the improvement in enzymatic digestibility when pretreated lignocellulosic biomass is mechanically refined. This is because the fiber cell wall is complex across multiple scales, including the molecular scale, nano- and meso-scale (microfibril), and microscale (tissue level). A combination of advanced characterization tools is used in this study to better understand the effect of mechanical refining on the meso-scale microfibril assembly and the relationship between those meso-scale modifications and enzymatic hydrolysis.

RESULTS

Enzymatic conversion of autohydrolysis sugarcane bagasse was improved from 69.6 to 77.2% (11% relative increase) after applying mechanical refining and an increase in enzymatic digestibility is observed with an increase in refining intensity. Based on a combination of advanced characterizations employed in this study, it was found that the refining action caused fiber size reduction, internal delamination, and increase in pores and swellability.

CONCLUSIONS

A higher level of delamination and higher increase in porosity, analyzed by TEM and DSC, were clearly demonstrated, which explain the faster digestibility rate during the first 72 h of enzymatic hydrolysis for disc-refined samples when compared to the PFI-refined samples. In addition, an increased inter-fibrillar distance between cellulose microfibrils at the nano-meso-scale was also revealed by SFG analysis, while no evidence was found for a change in crystalline structure by XRD and solid-state NMR analysis.

Effects of combined pretreatment of dilute acid pre-extraction and chemical-assisted mechanical refining on enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass

An efficient enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass into fermentable sugars depends greatly on the pretreatment of raw materials. In this study, a combination of dilute acid pre-extraction and chemical-assisted mechanical refining was used to pretreat wood lignocellulosic biomass for subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis. This work analyzed the surface lignin concentration, specific surface area, crystallinity, fines content, fiber length, and kink index of the resultant pulp substrates and their effects on the enzymatic hydrolysis. The results showed that the combined pretreatment significantly enhanced the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency, and the maximum glucose conversion yield and glucose concentration were 93.32% and 21.41 g L⁻¹, respectively. It is found that the surface lignin concentration, specific surface area, and fines content significantly affected the enzymatic hydrolysis.

The combined pretreatment of dilute acid pre-extraction and mechanical refining significantly improved the enzymatic hydrolysis performance of lignocellulosic biomass.