Pre-treatment of lignocellulosic biomass using ionic liquids: wheat straw fract...

• Author(s): Lopes, André ; João, Karen ; Rubik, Djonatam ; Bogel-Lukasik, Ewa ; Duarte, Luís C. ; Andreaus, Jurgen ; Bogel-Lukasik, R.
• Date: 2013
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.9/2324
• Origin: Repositório do LNEG
• Subject(s): Ionic Liquids; Lignocellulose; Pre-treatment; Fractionation; Cellulose; Hemicellulose; Lignin
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

This work is devoted to study pre-treatment methodologies of wheat straw with 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([emim][CH3COO]) and subsequent fractionation to cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The method developed and described here allows the separation into high purity carbohydrate and lignin fractions and permits an efficient IL recovery. A versatility of the established method was confirmed by the IL reuse. The fractionation of completely dissolved biomass led to cellulose-rich and hemicellulose-rich fractions. A high purity lignin was also achieved. To verify the potential further applicability of the obtained carbohydrate-rich fractions, and to evaluate the pre-treatment efficiency, the cellulose fraction resulting from the treatment with [emim][CH3COO] was subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis. Results showed a very high digestibility of the cellulose samples and confirmed a high glucose yield for the optimized pre-treatment methodology.