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Item type:Publication, Access status: without files , Levulinic acid production integrated into a sugarcane bagasse based biorefinery using thermal-enzymatic pretreatment(Elsevier, 2017-02-10); ; ; ; Levulinic acid (LA) is a promising platform chemical that can be produced from C6-sugars of lignocellulose. However, direct conversion of lignocellulose leads to the predefined by-products furfural and a solid residue, composed of lignin and humins. Enabling independent conversion of the major biomass components would increase the flexibility in terms of the products of a biorefinery. Therefore, this work focuses on integrating LA production into a biorefinery, which fractionates the biomass with a thermal-enzymatic treatment using hot water and enzymes only. Besides a glucose solution, used for LA production, a hemicellulose rich hydrolysate and solvent free lignin were recovered. The yields for the C6-fractions after thermal and enzymatic treatment were 95.8 mol% and 62.1 mol%, respectively. The influence of temperature (160–200 °C), residence time (3–90 min) and acid concentration (0.25–1 M) on LA synthesis, following thermal-enzymatic treatment was investigated by statistical methods, achieving a maximum LA yield of 67.7 mol%.Publicationtype: Journal Article104 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Access status: without files , Structural characterisation of pretreated solids from flow-through liquid hot water treatment of sugarcane bagasse in a fixed-bed reactor(2015-05-01); ; ; Untreated sugarcane bagasse and sugarcane bagasse pretreated with flow-through liquid hot water (LHW) treatment (170-207. °C and 204-250. ml/min) in a fixed-bed reactor have been structurally characterised. Field emission gun scanning electron microscopy (FEG-SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to investigate changes in the residues, in particular due to the fate of lignin. FEG-SEM results show that the LHW treatment modified the surface morphology of the pretreated bagasse with lignin droplets being observed on the fibre surface. TEM showed an increase in the plant cell wall porosity and lignin migration across the plant cell wall. Increases in pretreatment temperature were observed to increase the average size and density of lignin droplets on the fibre surface. The results provide evidence that for LHW flow-through treatment, just as for batch treatment, lignin repolymerisation and deposition on the surface of pretreated sugarcane bagasse is an important consideration.Publicationtype: Journal ArticleScopus© Citations 13 29