Catalyst-recirculating system in steam explosion pretreatment for producing high-yield of xylooligosaccharides from oat husk.

We propose a closed-loop pretreatment process, wherein volatiles produced during steam explosion pretreatment were recovered and reintroduced as acid catalysts into the pretreatment system. The volatiles were separated through a drastic decompression process followed by a steam explosion process and recovered as a liquified catalyst (LFC) through a heat exchanger. The LFC effectively served as an acid catalyst for hemicellulose hydrolysis, significantly decreasing residence time from 90 min to 30 min to achieve 80 % conversion yield at 170 °C. Hydrolysates with high content of lower molecular weight oligomeric sugars were obtained using LFC, and were considered advantageous for application as prebiotics. These results are attributed to the complementary features of acetic acid and furfural contained within the LFC. Computational simulation using Aspen Plus was used to investigate the effects of recycling on LFC, and it demonstrated the feasibility of the catalyst-recirculating system. A validation study was conducted based on simulation results to predict the actual performance of the proposed pretreatment system. Based on these results, the recirculating system was predicted to improve the conversion yield and low-molecular weight oligomers yield by 1.5-fold and 1.6-fold, respectively.

Glucaric Acid Production from Miscanthus sacchariflorus via TEMPO-Mediated Oxidation with an Efficient Separation System.

In this study, production and isolation of glucaric acid from lignocellulosic biomass were performed via potassium cation-based TEMPO-mediated oxidation for the ease of glucaric acid isolation. To optimize the oxidation conditions, response surface methodology (RSM) was adopted using standard glucose as the raw material. Among the oxidation conditions, the dosage of oxidant and pH of reaction affected the glucaric acid production, and the optimum conditions were suggested by RSM analysis: 5 °C of reaction temperature, 4.23 equiv dosage of KClO per mole of glucose, and pH of 12. Furthermore, glucaric acid was produced from lignocellulosic biomass-derived enzymatic hydrolysate from Miscanthus under optimum conditions. The impurities such as xylose and lignin in enzymatic hydrolysate inhibited the efficiency of glucose oxidation. As a result, more oxidant was required to produce sufficient glucaric acid from the enzymatic hydrolysate compared to standard glucose. The produced glucaric acid was simply isolated by controlling the pH in the form of glucaric acid monopotassium salt, which showed lower solubility in water, and the purity of isolated glucaric acid was over 99%. The overall mass balance of feedstock to glucaric acid was analyzed, suggesting that 86.38% (w/w) glucaric acid could be produced from initial glucan in feedstock.