Abstract
Renewable and green energy sources are much sought. Bioethanol is an environmentally friendly transportation fuel. Pine cones from Pinus radiata were shown to be a potential feedstock for the production of bioethanol. Alkaline (NaOH) pretreatment was carried out to delignify the lignocellulosic material and generate holocellulose (72 wt. % yield). The pretreated biomass was hydrolysed using HCl as catalyst under microwave irradiation and hydrothermal conditions. Microwave irradiation was found to be better than the hydrothermal process. Microwave irradiation accelerated the hydrolysis of biomass (42 wt. % conversion) with the reaction conditions being 3 M HCl and 5 min of irradiation time. Interestingly, even the xylose, which is the major component of the hydrolyzate was found to be metabolized to ethanol using Baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) under the experimental conditions. 5.7 g of ethanol could be produced from 100 g of raw pine cones.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 215-220 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Journal of Environmental Management |
| Volume | 162 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Oct 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
Funding
Gedanken thanks the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) for the research grant 3-9802 and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) for supporting the research via a grant 12/586 . Grateful thanks are due to Dr. Alexander Varvak, Bar Ilan University, for the valuable assistance in the HPLC analysis.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Israel Science Foundation | 12/586 |
| Ministry of science and technology, Israel | 3-9802 |
Keywords
- Acid hydrolysis
- Bioethanol
- Holocellulose
- Microwave irradiation
- Pinus radiata
- Saccharomyces cerevisiae
