Kinetic Modeling of Hemicellulose Hydrolysis from Triticale Straw in a Pressurized Low Polarity Water Flow-Through Reactor

The Kinetics Studies on Hydrolysis of Hemicellulose

The kinetics studies is of great importance for the understanding of the mechanism of hemicellulose pyrolysis and expanding the applications of hemicellulose. In the past years, rapid progress has been paid on the kinetics studies of hemicellulose hydrolysis. In this article, we first introduced the hydrolysis of hemicelluloses via various strategies such as autohydrolysis, dilute acid hydrolysis, catalytic hydrolysis, and enzymatic hydrolysis. Then, the history of kinetic models during hemicellulose hydrolysis was summarized. Special attention was paid to the oligosaccharides as intermediates or substrates, acid as catalyst, and thermogravimetric as analyzer method during the hemicellulose hydrolysis. Furthermore, the problems and suggestions of kinetic models during hemicellulose hydrolysis was provided. It expected that this article will favor the understanding of the mechanism of hemicellulose pyrolysis.

Engineering aspects of hydrothermal pretreatment: From batch to continuous operation, scale-up and pilot reactor under biorefinery concept

Different pretreatments strategies have been developed over the years mainly to enhance enzymatic cellulose degradation. In the new biorefinery era, a more holistic view on pretreatment is required to secure optimal use of the whole biomass. Hydrothermal pretreatment technology is regarded as very promising for lignocellulose biomass fractionation biorefinery and to be implemented at the industrial scale for biorefineries of second generation and circular bioeconomy, since it does not require no chemical inputs other than liquid water or steam and heat. This review focuses on the fundamentals of hydrothermal pretreatment, structure changes of biomass during this pretreatment, multiproduct strategies in terms of biorefinery, reactor technology and engineering aspects from batch to continuous operation. The treatise includes a case study of hydrothermal biomass pretreatment at pilot plant scale and integrated process design.

A kinetic model for hydrothermal pretreatment of sugarcane straw

This work presents kinetic models of cellulose and hemicellulose extraction during hydrothermal pretreatment of sugarcane straw. Biomass was treated under conditions of 180, 195, and 210°C, using a solid/liquid ratio of 1:10 (w/v). In this study, cellobiose, glucose, formic acid and hydroxymethylfurfural (from cellulosic fraction) and xylose, arabinose, acetic acid, glucuronic acid and furfural (from hemicellulosic fraction) were taken into account in the kinetic parameters determination. The global search algorithm Simulated Annealing was used to fit the models. At 195°C/15min, 85% of hemicellulose and 21% of cellulose removal was reached. For the confidence regions, it was observed that it can be broad, which is coherent with the fact that the parameters are highly correlated. Kinetic models proposed for both cellulosic and hemicellulosic fractions degradation fitted well to the experimental data.

Modeling of biomass fractionation in a lab-scale biorefinery: Solubilization of hemicellulose and cellulose from holm oak wood using subcritical water

Lignocellulose fractionation is a key biorefinery process that need to be understood. In this work, a comprehensive study on hydrothermal-fractionation of holm oak in a semi-continuous system was conducted. The aim was to develop a physicochemical model in order to reproduce the role of temperature and water flow over the products composition. The experiments involved two sets: at constant flow (6mL/min) and two different ranges of temperature (140-180 and 240-280°C) and at a constant temperature range (180-260°C) and different flows: 11.0, 15.0 and 27.9mL/min. From the results, temperature has main influence and flow effect was observed only if soluble compounds were produced. The kinetic model was validated against experimental data, reproducing the total organic carbon profile (e.g. deviation of 33%) and the physicochemical phenomena observed in the process. In the model, it was also considered the variations of molecular weight of each biopolymer, successfully reproducing the biomass cleaving.

Hydrolysis of sweet blue lupin hull using subcritical water technology

Hydrolysis of sweet blue lupin hulls was conducted in this study using subcritical water technology. Effects of process parameters, such as pressure (50-200 bar), temperature (160-220°C), flow rate (2-10 mL/min), and pH (2-12), were studied to optimize maximum hemicellulose sugars recovery in the extracts. Extracts were analyzed for total hemicellulose sugars, phenolics and organic carbon contents and solid residues left after treatments were also characterized. Temperature, flow rate, and pH had a significant effect on hemicellulose sugar removal; however, the effect of pressure was not significant. The highest yield of hemicellulose sugars in the extracts (85.5%) was found at 180°C, 50 bar, 5 mL/min and pH 6.2. The thermal stability of the solid residue obtained at optimum conditions improved after treatment and the crystallinity index increased from 11.5% to 58.6%. The results suggest that subcritical water treatment is a promising technology for hemicellulose sugars removal from biomass.

Simulated performance of reactor configurations for hot-water pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse

During the pretreatment of cellulosic biomass for subsequent microbial or enzymatic processing, the fiber reactivity typically increases with increasing severity but so does sugar degradation. Experimental results with sugarcane bagasse show that this tradeoff can be mitigated substantially by pretreatment in a flow-through (FT) mode. A model that incorporates both kinetics and mass transfer was developed to simulate the performance of pretreatment in plug flow, counter-current flow, cross flow, discrete counter-current and partial FT configurations. The simulated results compare well to the literature for bagasse pretreated in both batch and FT configurations. A variety of FT configurations result in sugar degradation that is very low (1-5%) and 5-20-fold less than a conventional plug flow configuration. The performance exhibits strong sensitivity to the extent of hemicellulose solubilization, particularly for a conventional plug flow configuration.

Kinetic modeling of xylan hydrolysis in co- and countercurrent liquid hot water flow-through pretreatments

A kinetic model for xylan hydrolysis in liquid hot water flow-through pretreatment was developed. The model utilized a declining xylan hydrolysis rate constant with increasing conversion in combination with direct xylooligomer degradation. The model was able to describe experimental results from flow-through pretreatment of corn stover and triticale straw at various pretreatment temperatures, and was applied to predict and compare the performance of xylan hydrolysis in co- and countercurrent flow-through pretreatments. Countercurrent pretreatment resulted in higher concentration of solubilized xylan and 3-6-fold less degradation. Maintaining a temperature gradient along the reactor axis reduced degradation compared to a fixed reactor temperature. Biomass bed shrinking during pretreatment increased the final concentration of solubilized xylan by about 10%. Model predictions were sensitive to the packing density of biomass bed. The model is useful for evaluating biomass flow-through pretreatments and has utility in design of flow-through reactors.

A model for optimizing the enzymatic hydrolysis of ionic liquid-pretreated lignocellulose

Miscanthus x giganteus was pretreated with the ionic liquid (IL) 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate at ten different pretreatment temperatures and times. The enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated Miscanthus to glucose and xylose was measured as a function of time to provide rate and final conversion data. A series of two irreversible, first-order reactions with Arrhenius temperature dependencies was used to model both the cellulose and hemicellulose pretreatment. This kinetic model was used to predict the enzymatic hydrolysis conversion of IL pretreated Miscanthus over a range of pretreatment temperatures (70-140 °C) and times (1-48 h), and indicated a wide range of optimal pretreatment conditions, from high temperatures/short times to lower temperatures/long times. Pre-exponential constants and activation energies obtained from the kinetic model are within reported ranges of experimentally obtained values for other pretreatments, indicating that the model may be broadly applicable to a variety of lignocellulosic pretreatment processes.

Hydrolysis of sweet sorghum bagasse and eucalyptus wood chips with liquid hot water

The chemical composition, hydrolysis products, and kinetics during liquid hot water pretreatment of sweet sorghum bagasse (SSB) and eucalyptus wood chips (EWC) were investigated. Under optimal conditions, a total xylose recovery of 79.6% and 55.6% for SSB and of 74.9% and 84.4% for EWC was achieved after pretreatments in a step-change flow rate reactor (184 °C, 20 ml/min, 8 min, and 10 ml/min, 10 min) and batch stirred reactor (184 °C, 5%w/v, 18 min), respectively. More than 90% of the xylose was recovered as oligomers from SSB, independent of the type of reactor employed. The activation energies of xylan decomposition of SSB in the step-change flow rate reactor was 6.5-fold greater than that of EWC in the batch stirred reactor due to accumulation of acidic products. These findings show that sugar recovery is dependent on the reactor configuration for specific substrates.

Pretreatment of oil palm frond using hot compressed water: an evaluation of compositional changes and pulp digestibility using severity factors

The influence of reaction temperature (160-200°C), residence time (45-90min), and liquid-solid ratio (8-16v/w) on oil palm frond (OPF) pre-treated with hot compressed water (HCW) was evaluated using severity factors. Effect of the process parameters studied on pulps composition and digestibility were found to be complex. The results revealed that digestibility could not be predicted merely according to composition. Severity factor was correlated with compositional changes and digestibility with good R-squared values at varied liquid-solid ratios (8-16v/w), but not with overall glucose yield. HCW pretreatment significantly improved the overall glucose yield up to 83.72% with severity of 3.31 and liquid-solid ratio of 8.0 compared to untreated raw OPF which only recorded an overall glucose yield of 30.97%. HCW is therefore an effective method for pretreatment of OPF for glucose recovery.

Kinetic model for glycan hydrolysis and formation of monosaccharides during dilute acid hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse

Sugarcane bagasse was hydrolyzed with 0.4-5 wt.% sulfuric acid at 97-126 °C. A novel kinetic model was proposed to describe glycan solubilization and formation of monosaccharides. Based on the multilayered structure of plant cell wall, the concept of "potential hydrolysis degree" (h(d))" was introduced into kinetic models for the hydrolysis of biomass glycans. It was found that during xylan hydrolysis, xylo-oligomers were apparently present in the liquid phase, particularly at low temperature. Therefore, to accurately determine the rate constants of xylan hydrolysis, residual xylan content in the solid phase, xylo-oligomers and xylose concentrations in liquid phase should be measured. Similarly, the concept of "potential hydrolysis degree" was applicable for araban and cellulose hydrolysis. The kinetic relationships between rate constant or h(d) and reaction severity (dilute acid concentration and temperature) were determined according to experimental data. The results showed that the model was reliable (determination coefficients (R(2)) in the range of 0.95-0.995) to describe the kinetic behavior of dilute acid hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse.

Optimization of processing conditions for the fractionation of triticale straw using pressurized low polarity water

Pressurized low polarity water (PLPW) fractionation of triticale straw was optimized to maximize hemicellulose and lignin yield, and to produce a cellulose rich fraction for biofuels production. The optimum PLPW conditions for hemicellulose yield was determined to be 165 °C, with a flow rate of 115 mL/min, and a solvent-to-solid ratio of 60 mL/g. Hemicellulose and lignin yield generally increased with increasing temperature and solvent-to-solid ratio. There was a small decrease in hemicellulose yield with an increase in flow rate. Minimum lignin content of the triticale straw residue after extraction was predicted to occur at a processing condition of 206 °C, 160 mL/min, and 67 mL/g. PLPW was successful in removing 73-78% of the hemicellulose, leaving a cellulose rich fraction (65% glucose concentration). Lignin was equally distributed between the solid residues and the extracts and most of the hemicellulose was extracted in oligomer form. Remaining solid residues after fractionation were highly digestible by cellulase enzymes.