Pretreatment of rice straw for ethanol production by a two-step process using dilute sulfuric acid and sulfomethylation reagent

Shengdong Zhu, Wenjing Huang, Wangxiang Huang, Ke Wang, Qiming Chen and Yuanxin Wu

Applied Energy, 2015, vol. 154, issue C, 190-196

Abstract: Ethanol is now one of the most widely used transport bio-fuels and production of ethanol from rice straw (RS) is an effective RS utilization way. This work investigated a novel two-step RS pretreatment process with the goal of decreasing the ethanol production cost through complete utilization of its components. In the process, RS was first treated with dilute sulfuric acid to remove the hemicellulose and recover the xylose from its hydrolyzate as a feedstock for xylitol production, and then the residue was treated with the standard sulfomethylation reagent to remove the lignin and recover its hydrolyzate containing the lignosulfonate as a cement water reducer. Among tested conditions, the best acid treatment (AT) conditions were 100°C, 1.0wt% sulfuric acid, 10% (w/v) RS and 2h, and the hydrolyzate recycled 5 times. After AT, the xylose was recovered from its hydrolyzate with 83.2% yield. The best sulfomethylation treatment (ST) conditions were 160°C, 15% (w/v) acid treated RS, and 5h using the standard sulfomethylation reagent. After ST, its hydrolyzate containing 5.0% lignosulfonate was directly recovered as a cement water reducer. Under the above best two-step treatment conditions, 94% hemicellulose and 92% lignin in the origin RS were removed, but cellulose had almost no loss. After the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation of the two-step treated RS (100gL−1) for 72h, the ethanol concentration and its yield reached 40.6gL−1 and 86.4% respectively. It suggests the two-step pretreatment process was an efficient RS pretreatment method for its ethanol production. This process can be an example of RS bio-refinery for bio-fuel production.

Keywords: Rice straw; Acid treatment; Sulfomethylation treatment; Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation; Ethanol; Bio-refinery (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261915006017
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:154:y:2015:i:c:p:190-196

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.05.008

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().