Supercritical fluids as a green technology for the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass

Production and purification of xylitol by Scheffersomyces amazonenses via sugarcane hemicellulosic hydrolysate

“…The supercritical fluid extraction technology has been used for various purposes such as extracting essential oils, pre‐treatment of lignocellulosic biomass to improve enzymatic hydrolysis, extraction and recovery of bioactive compounds used as a food supplement or in nutraceutical formulations, isolation of natural compounds from plants, microalgae, and mushrooms . These different applications together with the results obtained from this work support the idea that supercritical CO 2 is a viable alternative for xylitol recovery from fermented broth.…”

“…The supercritical extraction experiments were performed following the procedure described by Serna et al ., on a laboratory scale unit comprising a CO 2 conditioning line with a cooler and a pump, a chamber, and a collector vessel (Fig. ).…”

Supercritical Fluids: A Promising Technique for Biomass Pretreatment and Fractionation

“…Besides that, scCO 2 facilitates mass transfer by enhancing diffusivity and lowering viscosity of the solvent system. Additionally, the moisture present in the biomass together with CO 2 generates carbonic acid, which can promote hemicellulose hydrolysis (Narayanaswamy et al, 2011;Daza Serna et al, 2016;Fockink et al, 2018). One of the main economic advantages of scCO 2 pretreatment is that no fermentation inhibitors are produced; hence, once the extraction is over, the biomass is ready to be hydrolyzed and subsequently fermented without the need for detoxification or any separation/purification process (Gu et al, 2013).…”

“…Daza Serna et al (2016) investigated the effects of scCO 2 + H 2 O + EtOH on rice husks delignification at 80 • C and 270 bar for 10 min using a water-to-ethanol volumetric ratio of 2:1. For comparison effects, a diluteacid pretreatment was performed at 25% total solids using 2% H 2 SO 4 at 120 • C for 1 h and a solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:10.…”

“…Daza Serna et al (2016) compared dilute acid hydrolysis with supercritical processes for rice husks using the Aspen Process Economic Analyzer V8.2 (Aspen Technology Inc., United States). A plant able to process 10 ton·h −1 of biomass was simulated until the enzymatic hydrolysis stage using data obtained experimentally and capital depreciation for 12 years of operation.…”