Aqueous Sulfite Research Paper

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Sulphite application is emerging as a promising biomass pretreatment method due to positive results obtained from several materials (Bensah and Mensah, 2009). University of Wisconsin, Madison researchers have developed an improved pretreatment process for conversion of biomass. This process, known as Sulfite Pretreatment to Overcome Recalcitrance of Lignocellulose (SPORL), reduces the energy consumption needed for size-reduction processes, required before enzymatic hydrolysis, by more than tenfold. The new method can use several aqueous sulfite or bisulfite solutions over a wide range of pH values and temperatures to weaken the chemical structure of the plant material. It is particularly suitable for woody biomass, softwoods such as pines …show more content…

In addition, the final enzymatic hydrolysis can be coupled directly after the pretreatment with or without washing the material or adding a surfactant to aid in the process. The pretreatment also can be used with steam explosion, using bisulfite as a catalyst. The hydrolyzed biomass can be separated and the sugars fermented or catalytically converted into fuels after pretreatment and the sulfonated lignin byproducts can be sold to established markets and other wastes burned to produce energy for the process. The novel SPORL approach is a superior method of biomass pretreatment because of its versatility, efficiency and simplicity. It also has excellent scalability to commercial production. The method will increase the energy efficiency of ethanol fermentation and catalytic fuel production processes through decreased size-reduction energy requirements and maximized enzymatic cellulose conversion in a short period of time. This increase in efficiency will allow biofuels and other bioproducts to become economically competitive with petroleum derived fuels and …show more content…

The conditions used were - liquor/wood ratio = 3 : 1 v/w; Temperature -180∘C and RT- 25 minute). SPORL pretreatment of switchgrass was superior to dilute acid (Zhang et al., 2013; Shuai et al., 2010) and alkali (Zhang et al., 2013) in terms of the digestibility of the pretreated substrates. Similarly, higher sugar yields and lower inhibitor concentration were found with SPORL pretreated agave stalk relative to dilute acid and sodium hydroxide (Yang et al., 2012). The SPORL process was also found superior to the organosolv and steam explosion pretreatments based on the total sugar recovery and energy consumption (Zhu and Pan,

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