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A green and efficient way to improve sugar recovery of wheat straw by ultrasonic-assisted xylanase pretreatment

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Abstract

The cost-effectiveness of bioethanol production from wheat straw (WS) has been hindered by low sugar yield and high manufacturing cost. In this research, an ultrasonic-assisted xylanase (UX) pretreatment of WS was developed to enhance sugar recovery with low energy cost. The proposed method provides several benefits, including the following: (i) the surface roughness of WS was remarkably increased with ultrasonic at room temperature, which has provided more catalytic sites for xylanase; (ii) the hemicellulose and lignin barriers around cellulose were efficiently removed with xylanase pretreatment; and (iii) the accessibility of cellulose and sugar recovery of WS were improved under mild conditions. Under optimized conditions, a maximum of 69.1% hemicellulose removal and 49.7% delignification were attained with UX pretreatment, resulting in glucose yield five-fold that of raw wheat straw. FT-IR, XRD, TGA, SEM, and CLSM were used to characterize the samples before and after pretreatment. The results show that the UX pretreatment significantly improved the accessibility of cellulose.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.21876062) and the Key R&D Program of Shandong Province (No.2019GSF109071).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Smart Materials & Engineering, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, China

    Ying Sui, Yu Cui, Shah Zeb & Guoxin Sun

  2. School of Biological Science and Technology, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, China

    Yuanxiu Wang

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  2. Yu Cui
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  4. Shah Zeb
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Contributions

Methodology: Guoxin Sun, Ying Sui. Formal analysis and investigation: Ying Sui, Yuanxiu Wang. Writing-original draft preparation: Ying Sui, Shah Zeb. Writing-review and editing: Yu Cui, Guoxin Sun. Supervision: Guoxin Sun.

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Correspondence to Guoxin Sun.

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Sui, Y., Cui, Y., Wang, Y. et al. A green and efficient way to improve sugar recovery of wheat straw by ultrasonic-assisted xylanase pretreatment. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 13, 7067–7078 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-021-01623-6

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