• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.177-183
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• 2014

Recently, many biofuels and chemicals converted from renewable resources have been introduced into chemical industries. Sargassum fulvellum is a brown macro-algae, which is found on the seashores of Korea and Japan. In this work, the production of total reducing sugar and levulinic acid from S. fulvellum, using dilute-acid catalyzed hydrothermal hydrolysis and statistical methodology, was investigated. As a result, 15.28 g/l total reducing sugar was obtained under the optimized conditions of $160.1^{\circ}C$, 1.0% sulfuric acid, in 20.2 min. Furthermore, 2.65 g/l levulinic acid was obtained at $189.5^{\circ}C$, 2.93% sulfuric acid, in 48.8 min.