Levulinic acid production integrated into a sugarcane bagasse based biorefinery using thermal-enzymatic pretreatment

Journal
Industrial crops and products  
Volume
99
Start Page
172
End Page
178
Citation
Industrial Crops and Products (99): 172-178 (2017-05-01)
Publisher DOI
10.1016/j.indcrop.2017.02.010
Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85012050412
Publisher
Elsevier
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%.
Subjects
Levulinic acid
Sugarcane bagasse
Liquid hot water treatment
Pelletizing
Methane sulfonic acid
DDC Class
600: Technik
620: Ingenieurwissenschaften