Mild alkali-pretreatment effectively extracts guaiacyl-rich lignin for high lignocellulose digestibility coupled with largely diminishing yeast fermentation inhibitors in Miscanthus

In this study, various alkali-pretreated lignocellulose enzymatic hydrolyses were evaluated by using three standard pairs of Miscanthus accessions that showed three distinct monolignol (G, S, H) compositions. Mfl26 samples with elevated G-levels exhibited significantly increased hexose yields of up to 1.61-fold compared to paired samples derived from enzymatic hydrolysis, whereas Msa29 samples with high H-levels displayed increased hexose yields of only up to 1.32-fold. In contrast, Mfl30 samples with elevated S-levels showed reduced hexose yields compared to the paired sample of 0.89-0.98 folds at p<0.01. Notably, only the G-rich biomass samples exhibited complete enzymatic hydrolysis under 4% NaOH pretreatment. Furthermore, the G-rich samples showed more effective extraction of lignin-hemicellulose complexes than the S- and H-rich samples upon NaOH pretreatment, resulting in large removal of lignin inhibitors to yeast fermentation. Therefore, this study proposes an optimal approach for minor genetic lignin modification towards cost-effective biomass process in Miscanthus.

Lignin monomer in steam explosion assist chemical treated cotton stalk affects sugar release

In this study, the fermentable sugar released from cotton stalk (CS), which were pretreated by instant catapult steam explosion (SE) combined with different concentrations of strong monobasic acid (HCl), weak monobasic acid (CH₃COOH), strong monobasic alkali (NaOH) and weak monobasic alkali (NH₃·H₂O), followed by hydrolysis in cellulase/xylanase mixed enzyme solutions, were comparably investigated. The highest yield of 73.22% of fermentable sugar yield was obtained in SE-2.4 MPa-5%NH₃·H₂O treated CS substrates, which was 5.14 times higher than that from enzymatic hydrolysis (EH) of raw CS. Furthermore, evaluation of monolignins content (H, G, S) in different CS samples suggested that substrates rich in guaiacyl (G) and syringyl (S) would generate a higher efficiency of enzymatic saccharification. Therefore, the slight genetic modification of monolignins for cotton stalk might be a potential way to enhance biomass degradation and transformation.