Issue 2, 2019

Facile fractionation of lignocelluloses by biomass-derived deep eutectic solvent (DES) pretreatment for cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis and lignin valorization

Abstract

A low-cost and green biorefinery will increase the economy and revenue from lignocellulosic biomass. Herein, a biomass-derived deep eutectic solvent (DES) pretreatment was developed to deconstruct the recalcitrant structure of Eucalyptus for further cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis and lignin valorization. The DES consisted of biomass-derived chemicals (lactic acid and choline chloride). The results showed that DES pretreatment resulted in notable removal of hemicelluloses and lignin, and drastically reduced “biomass recalcitrance”. Under the optimum conditions (DES ratio: 10 : 1, temperature: 110 °C, time: 6 h), the glucose yield by enzymatic hydrolysis reached 94.3%, which was significantly enhanced 9.8 times compared to that of the original biomass without DES pretreatment. The state-of-the-art analysis indicated that the regenerated lignin exhibited well-preserved structures (i.e., β-O-4, β–β linkages) without contaminated carbohydrates, and it had a relatively low and homogeneous molecular weight. All these structural characteristics suggested that lignin has great potential application in its conversion into bio-based chemicals and materials. Besides, it is urgent to develop low-cost recycled DESs as green solvents for sustainable biomass pretreatment. The lifetime and recyclability experiment of the DES solution showed that the recovery yield of the DES was at least 90% and the fundamental structural properties of the recycled DES were almost unchanged throughout the recycling cycles. More importantly, the pretreatment efficiency (delignification and enzymatic saccharification) was still largely maintained after the recycling process. Overall, this work demonstrated that biomass pretreatment with the recycled DES was promising for a low-cost biorefinery to achieve an efficient fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass into fermentable glucose and high-quality lignin with tailored chemical structures.

Graphical abstract: Facile fractionation of lignocelluloses by biomass-derived deep eutectic solvent (DES) pretreatment for cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis and lignin valorization

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
30 Sep 2018
Accepted
28 Nov 2018
First published
29 Nov 2018

Green Chem., 2019,21, 275-283

Facile fractionation of lignocelluloses by biomass-derived deep eutectic solvent (DES) pretreatment for cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis and lignin valorization

X. Shen, J. Wen, Q. Mei, X. Chen, D. Sun, T. Yuan and R. Sun, Green Chem., 2019, 21, 275 DOI: 10.1039/C8GC03064B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements