Mechanochemical methods of activating processes of biomass pretreatment

Mechanochemical Transformations of Biomass into Functional Materials

“…Mechanochemical methods are applied in this case to reduce particle size and degree of crystallinity. [17,[434][435][436][437][438][439] However, the multiple types of sugar units that make up hemicellulose sugar polymers allow for a variety of glycosidic bonds in one molecule. [440] As such, hemicellulose is present in an amorphous form, which alleviate the need for many pretreatment techniques that are centered on crystal structure.…”

“…Many mechanochemical pretreatments have historically increased the efficiency of later reactions by increasing the accessible surface area of the biomass. Mechanochemical methods are applied in this case to reduce particle size and degree of crystallinity [17,434–439] . However, the multiple types of sugar units that make up hemicellulose sugar polymers allow for a variety of glycosidic bonds in one molecule [440] .…”

Impact of Design on the Activity of ZrO2 Catalysts in Cellulose Hydrolysis-Dehydration to Glucose and 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural

“…Moreover, some solid systems, such as oxides of zirconium (IV) or titanium (IV), are quite stable under hydrothermal conditions, which are applied when processing water-insoluble cellulose. The crystal structure of this polysaccharide makes the use of harsh conditions inevitable [22,23]. Nowadays, a number of heterogeneous catalysts have been proposed for the depolymerization of cellulose in an aqueous medium such as carbon materials [23][24][25][26][27][28][29], noble metals supported on carbon materials [30], polymer resins [31], oxides [31][32][33][34], zeolites [33,35], and caesium salts of heteropoly acids [36,37].…”

Mechanochemical amorphization of chitin: impact of apparatus material on performance and contamination

“…Amorphization is a common process whereby the crystallinity of a material is reduced by mechanical forces [17,24,50–51] or otherwise [52] by deforming particles and breaking lattice imperfections [50]. For biomass processing, amorphization has been used in several studies [24,53–54], either as a pretreatment [21] prior to deacetylation [18,55], enzymatic [22,56–57] or acidic depolymerization [23–24] and simultaneously during processing [42], yielding oligomers and monomers. Differentiating these regions of impact would be of great value for biomass processing.…”