Displacement washing of softwood pulp cooked to various levels of residual lignin content

This study investigates the influence of the degree of delignification of kraft spruce pulp cooked at seven different kappa numbers, ranging from 18.1 to 50.1, on the efficiency of displacement washing under laboratory conditions. Although the pulp bed is a polydispersive and heterogeneous system, the correlation dependence of the wash yield and bed efficiency on the Péclet number and the kappa number of the pulp showed that washing efficiency increased not only with an increasing Péclet number, but also with an increasing kappa number. The linear dependence between the mean residence time of the solute lignin in the bed and the space time, which reflects the residence time of the wash liquid in the pulp bed, was found for all levels of the kappa number. Washing also reduced the kappa number and the residual lignin content in the pulp fibers.

Assessment of Q(OP)D(PO) bleachability of softwood kraft pulp

Bleachability is evaluated as how easily a pulp sample is bleached and it depends on the structure of residual lignin and carbohydrates. Also, the bleachability varies depending on the bleaching sequence. ECF light sequences have been improved significantly in the recent years. However, we still don’t fully understand how ECF light bleach plants are optimally run. This work studies the bleachability of softwood kraft pulp in an ECF light bleaching sequence, (OO)Q(OP)D(PO). Three pulp samples with brown stock kappa number 27, 32 and 35 were bleached and studied for residual lignin, hexenuronic acid and carbohydrate content. It was found that in the bleaching stages that are highly delignifying, it is beneficial with a higher kappa number for the delignifying bleachability. However, in the bleaching stages where the objective is brightness increase, the brightness gain bleachability is improved by a lower kappa number. We also intended to determine which of the three samples had the best suited kappa number for this particular bleaching sequence. According to our results, the bleaching was most effective with kappa number around 32. Although an even higher kappa number resulted in higher yield after cooking, it seemed that this bleaching sequence cannot preserve the yield gain.

Ionic Liquids, Loosened the Coconut Shell Rigidity to Boost up the Biofuels Productivity

Recently, a continuous rising awareness among human community to an environmental issue had changed the frame of current scenario and shifted a whole attention of research community towards the sustainable energy options & selecting the greener-solvents technology like Ionic-Liquids (ILs). An ionic-liquid technology known to augment the biorefineries pre-processing step mainly targeted to dissolute the complex and rigid structure of lignocellulosic biomass and promote to produce an economically valuable biofuels. 1-Butyl-3methylimidazolium acetate [BMIM][COO−] and 1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride [BMIM][Cl−] (ILs) were extensively studied in a current research study. Studied Ionic-liquids have a great capacity to fractionate the plant cellular components by employing the process of delignification, as it can be depicted through an evaluation of degree of cellulose-crystallinity index. Current study exploits an aqueous-ionic-liquid technology, where a combined reaction mixture of deionized-water, ionic-liquids (ILs) and biomass load-size were used in (1:10:1) ratio under vacuum. An observed result of the study determined the Total reducing sugar (TRS) content and residual lignin yield after employing the ILs pretreatment. It estimate yield of Total reducing sugar (46.6%) and residual lignin (36.25498%) in S-12 shell biomass pretreated with [BMIM][COO−] at 120°C for 2.5h under vacuum. Although, Taguchi approach significantly notified the affect of process parameters during the ILs pretreatment processing. In this context, water-content (wt%) had found the most dominant physical factor instead of, temperature and time-duration. This research study also finds the S-12[BMIM][COO−], an effective biomass candidate compared to other studied biomasses to achieve the high biofuel yield in a cost-effective manner.

Valorization of Byproducts of Hemp Multipurpose Crop: Short Non-Aligned Bast Fibers as a Source of Nanocellulose

Nanocellulose was extracted from short bast fibers, from hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) plants harvested at seed maturity, non-retted, and mechanically decorticated in a defibering apparatus, giving non-aligned fibers. A chemical pretreatment with NaOH and HCl allowed the removal of most of the non-cellulosic components of the fibers. No bleaching was performed. The chemically pretreated fibers were then refined in a beater and treated with a cellulase enzyme, followed by mechanical defibrillation in an ultrafine friction grinder. The fibers were characterized by microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis and X-ray diffraction after each step of the process to understand the evolution of their morphology and composition. The obtained nanocellulose suspension was composed of short nanofibrils with widths of 5–12 nm, stacks of nanofibrils with widths of 20–200 nm, and some larger fibers. The crystallinity index was found to increase from 74% for the raw fibers to 80% for the nanocellulose. The nanocellulose retained a yellowish color, indicating the presence of some residual lignin. The properties of the nanopaper prepared with the hemp nanocellulose were similar to those of nanopapers prepared with wood pulp-derived rod-like nanofibrils.

Understanding the effects of different residual lignin fractions in acid-pretreated bamboo residues on its enzymatic digestibility

Background During the dilute acid pretreatment process, the resulting pseudo-lignin and lignin droplets deposited on the surface of lignocellulose and inhibit the enzymatic digestibility of cellulose in lignocellulose. However, how these lignins interact with cellulase enzymes and then affect enzymatic hydrolysis is still unknown. In this work, different fractions of surface lignin (SL) obtained from dilute acid-pretreated bamboo residues (DAP-BR) were extracted by various organic reagents and the residual lignin in extracted DAP-BR was obtained by the milled wood lignin (MWL) method. All of the lignin fractions obtained from DAP-BR were used to investigate the mechanism for interaction between lignin and cellulase using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology to understand how they affect enzymatic hydrolysis Results The results showed that removing surface lignin significantly decreased the yield for enzymatic hydrolysis DAP-BR from 36.5% to 18.6%. The addition of MWL samples to Avicel inhibited its enzymatic hydrolysis, while different SL samples showed slight increases in enzymatic digestibility. Due to the higher molecular weight and hydrophobicity of MWL samples versus SL samples, a stronger affinity for MWL (KD = 6.8–24.7 nM) was found versus that of SL (KD = 39.4–52.6 nM) by SPR analysis. The affinity constants of all tested lignins exhibited good correlations (r > 0.6) with the effects on enzymatic digestibility of extracted DAP-BR and Avicel. Conclusions This work revealed that the surface lignin on DAP-BR is necessary for maintaining enzyme digestibility levels, and its removal has a negative impact on substrate digestibility.

Evaluating the Effect of Residual Lignin Contents and Fermentation Systems on Bioethanol Production

Peroxide-acetic acid (Peroxide-HAc) pretreatment is a simplified and cost-effective technology due to its mild conditions without the catalysis of strong acids, which was introduced to treat sugarcane bagasse (SCB) in this paper. Then pretreated SCB was used to produce bioethanol using thermophilic Saccharomyces cerevisiae in deionized water (DW) and sodium citrate buffer solution (SCS) fermentation systems, respectively. Results: showed that peroxide-HAc pretreatment can selectively remove lignin and change morphological structures, thus positively increasing saccharification and fermentation efficiency downstream. SCB pretreated at 100 °C obtained the lowest residual lignin content of 2.88% and achieved the highest ethanol yield of 92.10% (0.45 g/g-biomass) in DW system. In particular, SCS can decrease the residual sugars content of pretreated SCB during simultaneous saccharification and co-fermentation (SSCF) process. The addition of Tween 80 improved SSCF of SCB pretreated at 80 °C likely because Tween 80 can block residual lignin adsorption with enzymes. The concentration of acetic acid and glycerol byproducts from SCB pretreated at 80 °C can be decreased by SCS and DW systems, respectively, comparing to SCS and DW systems with additing Tween 80. This study provided a systematic process route for the bioethanol production by mild pretreatment method.

Investigation of interaction between cellulase and residual lignin fractions in acid-pretreated bamboo residues and their effect on enzymatic digestibility

Background: During dilute acid pretreatment, pseudo lignin and lignin form droplets which deposit on the surface of lignocellulose, and further inhibit its enzymatic hydrolysis. However, how this lignin interacts with cellulase enzymes and then affects enzymatic hydrolysis is still unknown. In this work, different fractions of surface lignin (SL) obtained from dilute acid pretreated bamboo residues (DAP-BR) were extracted by various organic reagents and the residual lignin in extracted DAP-BR was obtained by milled wood lignin (MWL) method. All the obtained lignin fractions from DAP-BR were used to investigate the interaction mechanism between lignin and cellulase using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technology in order to understand how they affect enzymatic hydrolysisResults: Results showed that removing surface lignin significantly decrease the enzymatic hydrolysis of DAP-BR from 36.5% to 18.6%. The addition of MWL samples to Avicel decreased enzymatic hydrolysis of Avicel, while different SL samples showed a slight increase to its enzymatic digestibility. Due to the higher molecular weight and hydrophobicity of MWL samples versus the SL samples, stronger affinity for MWL (KD = 6.8-24.7 nM) was found versus that of SL (KD = 39.4-52.6 nM) by SPR analysis. The affinity constant of all tested lignin had good correlations (R2>0.6) with their effects on enzymatic digestibility of extracted DAP-BR and Avicel.Conclusions: This work reveals that the surface lignin on DAP-BR is necessary towards maintaining enzyme digestibility levels, and its removal has a negative impact on the substrate’s digestibility.