Surfactant-assisted alkaline pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of Miscanthus sinensis for enhancing sugar recovery with a reduced enzyme loading

Xiyu Cheng; Ying Luo; Yifan Gao; Shen Li; Chunming Xu; Shangyuan Tang; Yongkun Yang; Zehua Zhang; He Jiang; Hanli Xu; Shuobo Shi; Qiong Yan

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2022.918126

Surfactant-assisted alkaline pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of Miscanthus sinensis for enhancing sugar recovery with a reduced enzyme loading

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Jul 22:10:918126. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.918126. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Xiyu Cheng¹, Ying Luo¹, Yifan Gao¹, Shen Li¹, Chunming Xu², Shangyuan Tang^{1

2

3

4}, Yongkun Yang¹, Zehua Zhang¹, He Jiang³, Hanli Xu¹, Shuobo Shi⁴, Qiong Yan¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Life Sciences and Bioengineering, School of Physical Science and Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China.
² Key Laboratory of Cleaner Production and Integrated Resource Utilization of China National Light Industry, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing, China.
³ Shangrao Municipal Ecological Environment Bureau, Shangrao, China.
⁴ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Surfactants play a vital role in the delignification and saccharification of lignocellulosic biomass. A strategy for coupling surfactant-assisted alkaline pretreatment (SAP) with surfactant-assisted enzymatic hydrolysis (SEH) has been proposed for improving sugar recovery from a potential energy crop, Miscanthus sinensis. Poly (ethylene glycol) 2000 (PEG 2000) was found to be more efficient in SAP than in other tested surfactants. Compositional and structural analysis revealed that the SAP process with 1% of PEG 2000 produced more efficient lignin removal and microstructure disruption of the pretreated sample, thus indicating much higher reducing sugar yields of 544.4-601.2 mg/g compared to the samples that were untreated or pretreated by alkali alone. Moreover, SEH with 1% Tween 80, which could block the lignin-enzyme interactions, produced a substantial reduction of 33.3% in the enzyme loading to achieve a higher sugar recovery from the SAP sample.

Keywords: Miscanthus sinensis; biomass; poly (ethylene glycol) 2000; surfactant-assisted alkaline pretreatment; surfactant-assisted enzymatic hydrolysis.