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Comparing the Recalcitrance of Eucalyptus, Pine, and Switchgrass Using Ionic Liquid and Dilute Acid Pretreatments

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Abstract

Pine, eucalyptus, and switchgrass were evaluated for the production of fermentable sugars via ionic liquid and dilute acid pretreatments and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis. The results show that among the three feedstocks, switchgrass has the highest sugar yields and faster hydrolysis rates for both pretreatment technologies by achieving 48 % (dilute acid) and 96 % (ionic liquid) sugar yields after 24 h. Of the two wood species, eucalyptus has a higher and faster sugar recovery after ionic liquid pretreatment than pine (93 vs. 62 % in 24 h) under 160 °C for 3 h with [C2mim][OAc]. Pretreatment of pine and eucalyptus is observed to be ineffective under 1.2 % dilute acid condition and 160 °C for 15 min, indicating that further enhancement of reaction temperature or acid concentration is necessary to increase the digestibility of pretreated materials. Raman spectroscopy data show that the extent of lignin depolymerization that occurs during pretreatment also varies for the three different feedstocks. Under similar hemicellulose removal conditions, lignin removal in ionic liquid pretreatment can help improve cellulose conversion. This finding may help explain the observed variation in the saccharification yields and kinetics. These results indicate that ionic liquid pretreatment not only improved saccharification over dilute acid for all three feedstocks but also better dealt with the differences among them, suggesting better tolerance to feedstock variability.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Henrik V. Scheller and Dr. Ning Sun for reviewing this manuscript. This work was part of the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute (http://www.jbei.org) supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research through contract DE-AC02-05CH11231 between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Deconstruction Division, Joint BioEnergy Institute, Emeryville, CA, USA

    Chenlin Li, Lan Sun, Blake A. Simmons & Seema Singh

  2. Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Department, Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, CA, USA

    Chenlin Li, Lan Sun, Blake A. Simmons & Seema Singh

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  1. Chenlin Li
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  2. Lan Sun
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Correspondence to Seema Singh.

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Li, C., Sun, L., Simmons, B.A. et al. Comparing the Recalcitrance of Eucalyptus, Pine, and Switchgrass Using Ionic Liquid and Dilute Acid Pretreatments. Bioenerg. Res. 6, 14–23 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-012-9220-4

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