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Two-step liquefication process of lignocellulose in acetone/H2O medium for non-enzymatic sugar production

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Abstract

The use of lignocellulosic biomass to produce biofuels and biobased products requires effective fractionation and valorization of the three main lignocellulose constituents. A novel two-step process was developed using acetone/H2O as solvent to fractionate lignocellulose into cellulose, hemicellulose derivatives, and lignin, followed by non-enzymatic hydrolysis of recovered cellulose into soluble sugars by ultra-low concentration acid. In the first step, about 87.6% of the hemicelluloses and 88.7% of the lignin were successfully removed and recovered in different streams, under the reaction condition of 140 °C for 1 h with 0.6 wt% H2SO4 in acetone/H2O medium. Then the recovered cellulose residues were hydrolyzed into monomers and soluble oligomers catalyzed by 0.25 wt% H2SO4 at the temperature of 180 °C for 15 min in the solvent mixture. This two-step method avoided the mutual interference of different components during the degradation process and successfully hydrolyzed and recovered 77.2% of the total carbohydrates from the raw corn stover without using expensive cellulase enzymes. This method has potential application in the effective utilization of lignocellulose and could serve as an alternative to current lignocellulosic derived sugar platform scheme.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the financial supports by the funds from Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (grant number: BK20181465) and Sinopec Group (grant number: 420037-3). We also acknowledge the Analysis and Testing Center of Changzhou University for providing the facilities for sample characterization used in this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioengineering, College of Pharmacy, Changzhou University, Changzhou, 213164, Jiangsu, China

    Qing Qing, Zhuang Ma, Panyan Chen, Liqun Wang & Yue Zhang

  2. China Petrochemical Corporation Dalian Petrochemical Research Institute, Dalian, 116045, Liaoning, China

    Quan Zhang

  3. Sinopec Shanghai Engineering Co., Ltd, Shanghai, 200120, China

    Dong Chen

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  1. Qing Qing
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  2. Zhuang Ma
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  3. Panyan Chen
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  4. Quan Zhang
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  5. Dong Chen
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  6. Liqun Wang
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  7. Yue Zhang
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Correspondence to Qing Qing or Yue Zhang.

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Qing, Q., Ma, Z., Chen, P. et al. Two-step liquefication process of lignocellulose in acetone/H2O medium for non-enzymatic sugar production. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 13, 17187–17196 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-021-02202-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-021-02202-5

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