Combined Aqueous Ammonia-Dilute Sulfuric Acid Pretreatment of Miscanthus for Bioethanol Production

바이오에탄올 제조를 위한 억새의 암모니아-희황산 복합 전처리

Pretreatment of cellulosic biomass is necessary before enzymatic saccharification and fermentation. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of combined aqueous ammonia-dilute sulfuric acid treatment on cellulosic biomass. Miscanthus was pretreated using aqueous ammonia and dilute sulfuric acid solution under high temperature and pressure conditions to be converted into bioethanol. Aqueous ammonia treatment was performed with 15 %(w/w) ammonia solution at $150^{\circ}C$ of reaction temperature and 20 minutes of reaction time. And then, dilute sulfuric acid treatment was performed with 1.0 %(w/w) sulfuric acid solution at $150^{\circ}C$ of reaction temperature and 10 minutes of reaction time. The compositional variations of this combined aqueous ammonia-dilute sulfuric acid treatment resulted in 68.0 % of cellulose recovery and 95.7 % of hemicellulose, 81.3 % of lignin, 89.1 % of ash removal respectively. The enzymatic digestibility of 90.5 % was recorded in the combined pretreated Miscanthus sample and it was 14.7 times higher than the untreated sample. The ethanol yield in the Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation was 90.4 % of maximum theoretical yield based on cellulose content of the combined pretreated sample and it was about 98 % compared to the ${\alpha}$-cellulose ethanol yield.