Pretreatment of garden biomass using Fenton’s reagent: influence of Fe2+ and H2O2 concentrations on lignocellulose degradation

Abstract

Garden biomass (GB) is defined as low density and heterogeneous waste fraction of garden rubbish like grass clippings, pruning, flowers, branches, weeds; roots. GB is generally different from other types of biomass. GB is mostly generated through maintenance of green areas. GB can be processed for bio energy production as it contains considerably good amount of cellulose and hemicellulose. However, pretreatment is necessary to delignify and facilitate disruption of cellulosic moiety. The aim of the present investigation was to pretreat GB using Fenton’s reagent and to study the influence of Fe2+ and H2O2 concentrations on degradation of lignin and cellulose. The data were statistically analyzed using ANOVA and numerical point prediction tool of MINITAB RELEASE 14 to optimize different process variables such as temperature, concentration of Fe2+ and H2O2. The results of the present investigation showed that Fenton’s reagent was effective on GB, however, concentration of Fe2+ and H2O2 play crucial role in determining the efficiency of pretreatment. An increase in H2O2 concentration in Fenton’s reagent significantly increased the rate of cellulose and lignin degradation in contrast to increasing concentration of Fe2+ ion which led to a decrease in lignocellulosic degradation.

Enhanced Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Poplar after Combined Dilute NaOH and Fenton Pretreatment

“…As the ratio increased continuously, the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency decreased. This is consistent with others' reports (Bhange et al 2015). Considering about these, the ratio 100:1, that is, 20 mmol/g of H2O2 and 0.2 mmol/g of FeSO4·7H2O seems to work the best for a high enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of cellulose.…”

“…Cotton fibers have been shown to be decayed completely by Fenton's reagent (Jain and Vigneshwaran 2012), and Fenton's reagent is effective on garden biomass (Bhange et al 2015). After enzymatic hydrolysis for 72 h, 35.41% of the glucose and 61.44% of the reducing sugars were obtained from the corn stover that had been pretreated with Fenton reagent and then dilute NaOH extraction (He et al 2015).…”

A bionic system with Fenton reaction and bacteria as a model for bioprocessing lignocellulosic biomass

“…This might be because free radicals produced by the Fenton reaction act on cellulose, resulting in oxidation and the creation of more sites for the cellulases to bind, improving the hydrolysis. However, fiber surface fibrillation generally occurs under mild reaction conditions, pretreatments with high concentrations of Fenton’s reagents can cause severe damage to the cellulosic fibers [ 29 ]. This also explained why Fenton-C could retain more cellulose and had a better effect on the enzymatic hydrolysis than Fenton-A and Fenton-B with high concentrations of Fenton reagents.…”

Oxidoreductases and Reactive Oxygen Species in Conversion of Lignocellulosic Biomass

“…Mimicking brown-rot fungi by using Fenton (304) and chelator-mediated Fenton (CMF) (243) treatments to generate lignin-destroying hydroxyl radicals from H 2 O 2 close to the biomass is an attractive scenario (305). Indeed, Fenton-type reactions have been successfully used to pretreat cotton fibers (306), garden biomass (307), rice straw (308), steam-exploded poplar (309), Miscanthus (310), switchgrass (310), corn stover (310), or wheat straw (310), allowing up to 5-fold improvements in saccharification yields (310). However, these Fenton reaction-based treatments require large amounts of chemicals (typically in the 0.1 to 10 M range for H 2 O 2 ) and may lead to considerable mass loss, while special care must be taken to ensure innocuousness of the reaction mixture prior to proceeding with downstream steps.…”