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Pretreatment of woody biomass for biofuel production: energy efficiency, technologies, and recalcitrance

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Abstract

This mini review discusses several key technical issues associated with cellulosic ethanol production from woody biomass: energy consumption for woody biomass pretreatment, pretreatment energy efficiency, woody biomass pretreatment technologies, and quantification of woody biomass recalcitrance. Both total sugar yield and pretreatment energy efficiency, defined as the total sugar recovery divided by total energy consumption for pretreatment, should be used to evaluate the performance of a pretreatment process. A post-chemical pretreatment wood size-reduction approach was proposed to significantly reduce energy consumption. The review also emphasizes using a low liquid-to-wood ratio (L/W) to reduce thermal energy consumption for any thermochemical/physical pretreatment in addition to reducing pretreatment temperature.

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Acknowledgement

We acknowledge Dr. Carl Houtman of US Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, for generously providing us the spreadsheet for thermodynamic calculations of enthalpy of pulp suspensions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, One Gifford Pinchot Drive, Madison, WI, 53726-2398, USA

    J. Y. Zhu

  2. Department of Biological Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    J. Y. Zhu & Xuejun Pan

  3. USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Rhinelander, WI, USA

    Ronald S. Zalesny Jr.

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  1. J. Y. Zhu
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  2. Xuejun Pan
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Correspondence to J. Y. Zhu.

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This work was conducted on official U.S. government time by Zhu and Zalesny. The work is in the public domain in the United States.

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Zhu, J.Y., Pan, X. & Zalesny, R.S. Pretreatment of woody biomass for biofuel production: energy efficiency, technologies, and recalcitrance. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 87, 847–857 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-2654-8

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