Chinese Journal of Catalysis ›› 2014, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (5): 763-769.DOI: 10.1016/S1872-2067(14)60040-1

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Enzymatic hydrolysis enhancement of corn lignocellulose by supercritical CO2 combined with ultrasound pretreatment

Jianzhong Yin, Liudan Hao, Wen Yu, Enjun Wang, Mengjiao Zhao, Qinqin Xu, Yifan Liu   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Machinery, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, Liaoning, China
  • Received:2013-11-14 Revised:2014-01-20 Online:2014-04-18 Published:2014-04-24
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (20976026, 20976028, 21376045), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (20120041110022), and the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (20102030, 2013220148).

Abstract:

Supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) combined with an ultrasound method using 15-25 MPa and the temperature range of 120-170 ℃ for 0.5-4 h was proposed as a pretreatment for corn cob and corn stalk with moisture contents of 50%. The results showed that both scCO2 pretreatment and scCO2 combined with ultrasound pretreatment could improve the total reducing sugar yields of the two materials. Enzymatic hydrolysis of both corn cob and corn stalk sugar using scCO2 pretreatment was increased by 50% and 29.8% compared with the control samples, respectively, while they were increased by 75% and 13.4%, respectively, using the scCO2 combined with ultrasound pretreatment under our experimental conditions. Following treatment from the two pretreatment processes, X-ray diffraction results indicated no significant change in crystallinity of the two materials. However, scanning electron microscopy images demonstrated that the microscopic structure of lignocellulose changed considerably and the surface area of lignocellulose increased significantly.

Key words: Lignocellulose, Pretreatment, Supercritical carbon dioxide, Ultrasound, Enzymatic hydrolysis