Evaluation of a pilot-scaled paddle dryer for the production of ethanol from lignocellulose including inhibitor removal and high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis.

The advantage of using paddle dryers (PD) in the production of sugars and 2nd generation ethanol from pretreated wheat straw was investigated. This machinery was employed in order to detoxify steam-exploded substrates and to mix different slurries in the hydrolysis step. The obtained hydrolysate was fermented by the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Acetic acid and furfural were reduced up to 11 and 26 fold respectively in the detoxified substrate. When fermentation was carried out at low solid suspension, the use of PD was as effective as water extraction in detoxifying exploded biomass, giving ethanol yields of 90% at 0.05 solid/liquid ratio (S/L) and 80% at 0.10 S/L. Moreover, by using PD the cellulose conversion yield was significantly improved in the hydrolysis step: when operating at higher S/L (0.4), the hydrolysis efficiency was twice the one achieved by using a bioreactor with a Rushton stirrer.

Technoeconomic study on steam explosion application in biomass processing.

This work is based on the data collected during trials of a continuous steam explosion (SE) plant, with a treatment capacity of about 350 kg/h, including the biomass fractionation section. The energy and water consumption, equipment cost, and manpower needed to run this plant have been used as the base case for a techno-economic evaluation of productive plants. Three processing plant configurations have been considered: (I) SE pretreatment only; (II) SE followed by the hemicellulose extraction; (III) SE followed by the sequential hemicellulose and lignin extractions. The biomass treatment cost has been evaluated as a function of the plant scale. For each configuration, variable and fixed cost breakdown has been detailed in the case of a 50,000 t/y plant.

Mathematical tool from corn stover TGA to determine its composition.

Corn stover was treated by steam explosion process at four different temperatures. A fraction of the four exploded matters was extracted by water. The eight samples (four from steam explosion and four from water extraction of exploded matters) were analysed by wet chemical way to quantify the amount of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Thermogravimetric analysis in air atmosphere was executed on the eight samples. A mathematical tool was developed, using TGA data, to determine the composition of corn stover in terms of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. It uses the biomass degradation temperature as multiple linear function of the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin content of the biomass with interactive terms. The mathematical tool predicted cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin contents with average absolute errors of 1.69, 5.59 and 0.74 %, respectively, compared to the wet chemical method.

Study on the conversion of wool keratin by steam explosion.

A wool fiber sample was submitted to chemical-free steam explosion in view of potential exploitation of keratin-based industrial and farm wastes. Fiber keratin was converted into a dark-yellow sludge that was submitted to phase separation by filtration, centrifugation, and precipitation of the soluble materials from the supernatant liquid. The resulting products, when compared with the original wool, showed the extent of disruption of the histology structure, reduction of the molecular weight to water-soluble peptides and free amino acids, and change of the structure of the remainder of the protein associated with breaking of disulfide bonds and decomposition of the high-sulfur-content protein fraction.