Sugarcane Bagasse Hydrolysis Enhancement by Microwave-Assisted Sulfolane Pretreatment

Patricia Portero-Barahona, Enrique Javier Carvajal-Barriga, Jesús Martín-Gil and Pablo Martín-Ramos
Additional contact information
Patricia Portero-Barahona: CLQCA, Neotropical Centre for the Biomass Research, School of Biological Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, Avda. 12 de Octubre 1076 y Roca, Quito 170303, Ecuador
Enrique Javier Carvajal-Barriga: CLQCA, Neotropical Centre for the Biomass Research, School of Biological Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, Avda. 12 de Octubre 1076 y Roca, Quito 170303, Ecuador
Jesús Martín-Gil: Agriculture and Forestry Engineering Department, ETSIIAA, Universidad de Valladolid, Avenida de Madrid 44, 34004 Palencia, Spain
Pablo Martín-Ramos: EPS, Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Ciencias Ambientales de Aragón (IUCA), Universidad de Zaragoza, Carretera de Cuarte, s/n, 22071 Huesca, Spain

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 9, 1-15

Abstract: Sugarcane bagasse is the major by-product of the sugarcane industry and, due to its abundant availability, it has been extensively studied for lignocellulosic bioconversion in the production of bioethanol and other value-added commercial products. In the study presented herein, a combined pretreatment using sulfolane, TiO 2 and alkali microwave irradiation (MW-A) was assessed for the dissolution of lignin prior to enzymatic saccharification of holocellulose. Total reducing sugars (TRS) and saccharinic acid yields were investigated. The increase in NaOH concentration up to 5% and in temperature from 120 °C to 140 °C were found to have a positive influence on both yields. While increasing the reaction time from 5 to 60 min only led to an increase in TRS yield <2%, a reaction time of 30 min almost doubled the saccharinic acids production. TRS yields and saccharinic acid production were approximately 5% and 33% higher when the sulfolane-TiO 2 reaction medium was used, as compared to MW-A in water, reaching up to 64.8% and 15.24 g/L of saccharinic acids, respectively. The proposed MW-A pretreatment may hold promise for industrial applications, given the good TRS yields obtained, and the associated enzyme and time/energy savings. The use of sulfolane-TiO 2 reaction medium is encouraged if saccharinic acids are to be recovered too.

Keywords: enzymatic hydrolysis; microwave irradiation; NaOH; pretreatment; sulfolane; total reducing sugars (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/9/1703/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/9/1703/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:9:p:1703-:d:228497

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().