Question

Please be as brief as you can

P6.5 What are the steps for lignocellulosic biomass conversion to bio- ach step. List a few pre- ethanol? Briefly explain what happens at e treatment platforms for lignocellulosic conversion.

Answer 1

The steps involved in conversion oflignocellulosic biomass to bioethanol is

1. Pretreatment: Cellulose, Hemicellulose and lignin forms Lignin carbohydrate complexes (LCC), first by chopping we reduce the size to 10-30 mm and then pretreatment is necessary to deconstruct the LCC's enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose. This pretreatment has four categories

i.Physical Pretreatment: These no need any chemicals and size reduction using grinding and milling comes under this.

ii. Chemical Pretreatment

iii. Solvent pretreatment: It is a fractionating process, where a organic or aquoes organic solvent is used with or without catalysts to deconstruct LCC's.

iv. Biological pretreatment: Solid fermentation is one of the process where it removes bacteria and fungi.

2. Enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose and Co-fermentation of C5-C6 sugars: Hydrolysis is needed to depolymerise the cellulose to glucose, which can be used to ethanol fermentation.

Cellulose production, Cellulose hydrolysis, Ethanol fermentation, Separate hydrolysis and co-fermentation, Bio-processing are the steps involved in production of bioethanol.

This is how lignocellulosic biomass is converted to bioethanol.