Influence of size reduction treatments on sugar recovery from Norway spruce for butanol production

Ming Yang; Minyuan Xu; Yufei Nan; Suvi Kuittinen; Md Kamrul Hassan; Jouko Vepsäläinen; Donglin Xin; Junhua Zhang; Ari Pappinen

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2018.02.072

Influence of size reduction treatments on sugar recovery from Norway spruce for butanol production

Bioresour Technol. 2018 Jun:257:113-120. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2018.02.072. Epub 2018 Feb 17.

Authors

Ming Yang¹, Minyuan Xu², Yufei Nan³, Suvi Kuittinen², Md Kamrul Hassan², Jouko Vepsäläinen⁴, Donglin Xin³, Junhua Zhang⁵, Ari Pappinen²

Affiliations

¹ College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, 3 Taicheng Road, 712100 Yangling, China; School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, FI80101 Joensuu, Finland.
² School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, FI80101 Joensuu, Finland.
³ College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, 3 Taicheng Road, 712100 Yangling, China.
⁴ School of Pharmacy, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 1627, FI70211 Kuopio, Finland.
⁵ College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, 3 Taicheng Road, 712100 Yangling, China. Electronic address: junhuazhang@nwsuaf.edu.cn.

PMID: 29494838
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2018.02.072

Abstract

This study investigated whether the effectiveness of pretreatment is limited by a size reduction of Norway spruce wood in biobutanol production. The spruce was milled, chipped, and mashed for hydrogen peroxide-acetic acid (HPAC) and dilute acid (DA) pretreatment. Sugar recoveries from chipped and mashed spruce after enzymatic hydrolysis were higher than from milled spruce, and the recoveries were not correlated with the spruce fiber length. HPAC pretreatment resulted in almost 100% glucose and 88% total reducing sugars recoveries from chipped spruce, which were apparently higher than DA pretreatment, demonstrating greater effectiveness of HPAC pretreatment on sugar production. The butanol and ABE yield from chipped spruce were 126.5 and 201.2 g/kg pretreated spruce, respectively. The yields decreased with decreasing particle size due to biomass loss in the pretreatment. The results suggested that Norway spruce chipped to a 20 mm length is applicable to the production of platform sugars for butanol fermentation.

Keywords: Biobutanol; Norway spruce; Pretreatment; Size reduction; Sugar recovery.

MeSH terms

1-Butanol
Butanols*
Carbohydrates
Fermentation
Hydrolysis
Norway
Sugars*

Substances

Butanols
Carbohydrates
Sugars
1-Butanol