Biorefinery System of Lignocellulosic Biomass Using Steam Explosion

Abstract

Recently, plant biomass has been attracting attention due to global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels. Lignocellulosic biomass (i.e., wood, straw, and bagasse) is attracting attention as an abundant renewable resource that does not compete with the food resources. It is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin and is a potential resource that can be converted into high-value-added substances, such as biofuels, raw materials for chemical products, and cellulose nanofibers. However, due to its complicated structure, an appropriate pretreatment method is required for developing its biorefinery process. Steam explosion is one of the simplest and environmentally friendly pretreatments to decompose lignin structure, which converts cellulose into low-molecular-weight lignin with high efficiency. It has received significant attention in the field of not only biofuel but also biochemical production. Steam explosion involves the hydrolysis of plant biomass under high-pressure steam and the sudden release of steam pressure induces a shear force on the plant biomass. Moreover, it is a green technology that does not use any chemicals. Thus, a steam explosion-based biorefinery system is highly effective for the utilization of lignocellulosic into useful materials, such as ethanol, methane gas, antioxidant material, epoxy resin, and cellulose nanofiber.

Effect of Processing Time of Steam-Explosion for the Extraction of Cellulose Fibers from Phoenix canariensis Palm Leaves as Potential Renewable Feedstock for Materials

“…Currently, the scarcity of natural resources, the high price of energy and the depletion of fossil feedstock have encouraged research into obtaining new sources of energy and alternative renewable raw materials to those derived from petroleum. In this sense, lignocellulosic biomass wastes, such as those generated in pruning or agricultural activities, could be transformed in biorefineries to obtain biocompounds and biofuels of highly interesting industrial applications [ 1 ]. Cellulose fibers and nanofibers could be valuable alternative feedstocks to obtain sustainable textiles or biopolymer-reinforced composites, which could contribute significantly to the production of sustainable and low environmental footprint biobased compounds [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ].…”

“…Cellulose can be extracted in many ways. Some chemical, physical, biological and hydrothermal technologies can be used for the pretreatment of plant biomass [ 1 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. Physical pretreatment is mainly carried out to decrease the particle size and increasing the surface area, which will make the subsequent extraction processes more effective and easier [ 19 , 20 ].…”

Steam Explosion Pretreatment: Biomass Waste Utilization for Methane Production

“…The chemical detoxification was treated by adding the modified pH such as water extraction, sodium hydroxide, and reductive substance [16,23,28,29]. The potential compounds that could be converted into methane from steam-exploded biomass fraction, is not only cellulose, hemicellulose, and monosaccharides compound, the steam-exploded aromatic lignin fraction and its derived product such as syringaldehyde and vanillin also could be converted into methane by the anaerobic digestion process [15,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

“…The steam explosion pretreatment that disintegrated the LCC impacted the higher accessibility of the digestion process to convert the cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin and its derived products into biogas [15]. Those pretreatments were simplified the hydrolysis process, however, to gain the economical factor is necessary to improve the production rate, solid retention time, and hydraulic retention time.…”

“…As the psychochemical pretreatment, the steam explosion could break the LCC and also change the chemical content as a derivative product of the content of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and other specific contents that differ from one biomass to another. The steam explosion pretreatment which is based on the hydrothermal pretreatment method with high pressure and short retention time then suddenly depressurized to make the explosion effect from the pressure differences between the pressure of the steaming chamber and the normal pressure of the explosion chamber [15]. The explosion effect disrupts the structure of LCC fibrils which break its polymer chain and become small particle size that could facilitate the digestion process easily [16].…”