Biomass breakdown A review on pretreatment instrumentations and methods

Abstract

Enzymatic breakdown of lignocellulosic biomass for liquid fuel production is a viable alternative to fossil fuels, due to its renewable and environmental friendly nature. Naturally, plants protect their cell wall polysaccharides by giving limited access to the cell wall degrading enzymes. Lignocellulose breakdown requires proper pretreatments that disrupt the close inter-component association between the constituents of the plant cell wall. For efficient biomass conversion, the choice of the correct pretreatment is important for removing the barriers to enhance access to microbial enzymes. Among the pretreatment methods available, biological pretreatment is a promising approach for biomass degradation as there are no inhibitors generated. Another significant area that needs attention is the development of methods that can qualitatively and quantitatively determine the degradation of biomass and product generation. More technological advancement would be required in the field of pretreatment technology and fermentation processes to make the whole process economical. Here, we review the recent developments in the field of lignocellulosics, role of various pretreatments, instruments & methods and role of microbial enzymes in biomass degradations.

Imidazolium Based Ionic Liquids: A Promising Green Solvent for Water Hyacinth Biomass Deconstruction

“…Therefore, the search of alternative renewable energy source for biofuel production has expanded (Rezania et al, 2015 ). Lignocellulose is most abundant, renewable, cost effective, carbon neutral, non-edible plant material (Saini et al, 2015 ) and can be used for bioethanol production (Zabed et al, 2016 ; Singh et al, 2018 ; Vyas et al, 2018 ). Lignocellulosic materials for biofuels production are of much interest due to its low cost and high availability.…”

Challenges of Biomass Utilization for Bioenergy in a Climate Change Scenario

“…For the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into fermentable sugars to occur in a viable way, some challenges must be overcome for commercial applications, such as (I) reduce costs of enzyme production; (II) selection of suitable enzyme sets with the optimal amount of each enzyme to optimize synergistic effects; (III) enzymes that can function effectively at high solid biomass loads; (IV) improvement of enzyme catalytic efficiency; and (V) reduction of the inhibition of the β-glucosidases final product [ 78 , 90 ].…”

Gas Fermentation Expands the Scope of a Process Network for Material Conversion

“…Breaking down complex mixtures of recalcitrant biomass and utilizing all its energy and carbon are challenging. Nonetheless, various alternative routes that are biological, chemical, or physical have been reported [33,34]. The downside of chemical or physical routes is that solvents or acids are often required for biomass pretreatment, which implies the inclusion of additional purification steps.…”

“…Moreover, the pretreatment processes ( Fig. 1, F) that allows the accessibility of carbohydrates from lignocellulosic biomass for LDSS fermentation are performed through various methods [33,34,44]. Unfortunately, lignocellulosic biomass consists of up to 35 % lignin [45], which is a recalcitrant chemical component that is hardly metabolized by microorganisms [46][47][48].…”