TECHNOLOGY AND EQUIPMENT FOR PROCESSING ACTIVATED AGRICULTURAL PLANT WASTE INTO BIOETHANOL

The article is devoted to the development of technology and equipment for the production of bioethanol from agricultural plant waste, activated by the steam explosion method. The value and novelty of research lies in obtaining new data on the effective acidic and enzymatic hydrolysis of activated raw materials, and developing a technology for the conversion of plant raw materials into bioethanol. The studies were carried out on the basis of the Department of Wood Materials Processing of Kazan National Research Technological University (Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan). A pilot plant for the production of bioethanol and the principle of its operation are presented. Pine wood waste and wheat straw (collected in Kukmor region of the Republic of Tatarstan in the period August-September 2021) were used as raw materials. Steam-explosive activation of raw materials was carried out at temperatures of 165 ⁰C and 210 ⁰C for 5 minutes. Acid hydrolysis parameters: H2SO4 concentration - 0.5% and 1.5%, hydromodule 1:15, hydrolysis temperature - 187⁰C, hydrolysis duration - 5 hours. Enzymatic hydrolysis parameters: preparation - Cellulox-A (OOO PO Sibbiopharm, Russia) - 6 and 12 g/kg of raw material, hydrolysis temperature - 45 ⁰C, substrate pH 4.7 (acetate buffer), raw material concentration in the substrate 33 g/l, the duration of hydrolysis is 72 h. Alcoholic fermentation of hydrolysates was carried out at 32-34⁰C using Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast, fermentation duration 7 h, yeast concentration 25 g/l. The bioethanol yield in % of reducing substances was recalculated after determining the mass yield. It is concluded that the vapor-explosive activation of pine wood at a temperature of 210 ºC makes it possible to obtain by acid hydrolysis and anaerobic fermentation of reducing substances up to 0.26 kg (0.33 l) of ethanol from 1 kg of activated raw materials, and activation of wheat straw at the same temperature allows obtaining up to 0.172 kg (0.218 l) ethanol with 1 kg of activated straw

Synthesis of Green Deep Eutectic Solvents for Pretreatment Wheat Straw: Enhance the Solubility of Typical Lignocellulose

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs), a novel and environmentally-friendly solvent, have high potential for biomass pretreatment due to its advantages of low cost, low toxicity, strong solubility, excellent selectivity and biocompatibility. Two types of DES (binary and ternary) were synthesized and characterized, and optimized ternary DES was selected to pretreat wheat straw for enhancement of the solubility of lignocellulose. Moreover, enzymatic hydrolysis was tested to verify the performance of pretreatment. In addition, the changes in surface morphology, structure and crystallinity of wheat straw pretreated by DES were analyzed to reveal the pretreatment mechanism. Experimental results indicated that viscosity exhibited little difference in different types of DESs, and a declining trend as the temperature increases in same DES. The ternary DES pretreatment efficiently enhanced the solubility of typical lignocellulose, with the optimal removal rate of lignin at approximately 69.46%. Furthermore, the total sugar concentration of the residue was about 5.1 times more than that of untreated wheat straw after the pretreated samples were hydrolyzed by the cellulase for 24 h, indicating that DES has the unique ability to selectively extract lignin and hemicellulose from wheat straw while retaining cellulose, and thus enhanced the solubility of lignocellulose. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation and X-ray diffraction (XRD) determination showed that the surface of wheat straw suffered from serious erosion and the crystallinity index of wheat straw increased after DES5 pretreatment. Therefore, DES cleaves the covalent bond between lignin and cellulose and hemicellulose, and reduces the intractability of lignin resulting in the lignin dissolution. It suggests that DES can be used as a promising and biocompatible pretreatment way for the cost-effective conversion of lignocellulose biomass into biofuels.

Experimental Investigation on Environmentally Sustainable Cement Composites Based on Wheat Straw and Perlite

Environmentally sustainable cement mortars containing wheat straw (Southern Italy, Apulia region) of different length and dosage and perlite beads as aggregates were prepared and characterised by rheological, thermal, acoustic, mechanical, optical and microstructural tests. A complete replacement of the conventional sand was carried out. Composites with bare straw (S), perlite (P), and with a mixture of inorganic and organic aggregates (P/S), were characterised and compared with the properties of conventional sand mortar. It was observed that the straw fresh composites showed a decrease in workability with fibre length decrease and with increase in straw volume, while the conglomerates with bare perlite, and with the aggregate mixture, showed similar consistency to the control. The thermal insulation of the straw mortars was extremely high compared to the sand reference (85–90%), as was the acoustic absorption, especially in the 500–1000 Hz range. These results were attributed to the high porosity of these composites and showed enhancement of these properties with decrease in straw length and increase in straw volume. The bare perlite sample showed the lowest thermal insulation and acoustic absorption, being less porous than the former composites, while intermediate values were obtained with the P/S samples. The mechanical performance of the straw composites increased with length of the fibres and decreased with fibre dosage. The addition of expanded perlite to the mixture produced mortars with an improvement in mechanical strength and negligible modification of thermal properties. Straw mortars showed discrete cracks after failure, without separation of the two parts of the specimens, due to the aggregate tensile strength which influenced the impact compression tests. Preliminary observations of the stability of the mortars showed that, more than one year from preparation, the conglomerates did not show detectable signs of degradation.