Enhancing the Deconstruction of Biomass With Alkaline-Oxidative Pretreatments At Modest Oxidant Loadings

Enhancing the deconstruction of biomass with alkaline-oxidative pretreatments at modest oxidant loadings

Tongjun Liu, Daniel L. Williams, Muyang Li, Zhenglun Li, Andrea Orjuela, Nirmal Uppugundla, Ven Balan, Eric Hegg, David Hodge

In the past we and others have identified alkaline hydrogen peroxide (AHP) pretreatment as highly effective for improving enzymatic digestibilities of grasses (e.g. corn stover and  switchgrass) due to the to several distinctive features of their cell wall structural organization that result in enhanced delignification.  As AHP was performed in the past greater than 10% wt/wt H2O2 loading on biomass was required to realize any incremental improvement in digestibility over NaOH-only pretreatment.  In this talk we will present results on new process concepts including alkaline pre-extraction prior to oxidative treatment and catalyzed oxidative pretreatment that can result in significant reductions in the oxidant loadings required for pretreatment and consequently the improve the economics.  Additionally we will present results that link structural changes in the cell wall to enhanced digestibility and will present several preliminary process design cases along with an economic analysis.