Ethanol organosolv pretreatment of softwood (Picea abies) and sugarcane bagasse for biofuel and biorefinery applications

Ethanol derived from biomass has the potential to be a renewable transportation fuel that can replace gasoline. This work was carried out to establish an optimized ethanol organosolv pretreatment of Norway spruce (Picea abies) for bioethanol production (63 wt% EtOH, pH ~3.5 in aqueous phase, 170–240 °C, 90 min) utilizing hydrolytic enzymes in the saccharification step. To test the generality of the method, a series of ethanol organosolv pretreatments were also performed on sugarcane bagasse (50 wt% EtOH, pH ~3.5 in aqueous phase, 155–210 °C, 90–120 min). The degree of delignification increased with increasing temperature during pretreatment, and the fastest increase was observed with sugarcane bagasse. The pretreatments were carried out in a batch mode. The maximum degree of delignification of ~65 % was reached at ~235 °C for Norway spruce, while sugarcane bagasse reached ~80 % at ~210 °C. Cellulose was subjected to degradation (5–10 % points) at these temperatures. Subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis (30 FPU/g cellulose, 32 pNPGU/g cellulose, 50 °C, 48 h) of ethanol organosolv-pretreated biomass achieved complete conversion for both raw materials at the highest degrees of delignification.