Energy potential of fruit tree pruned biomass in Croatia

The world's most developed countries and the European Union (EU) deem that the renewable energy sources should partly substitute fossil fuels and become a �bridge� to the utilization of other energy sources of the future. This paper will present the possibility of using pruned biomass from fruit cultivars. It will also present the calculation of potential energy from the mentioned raw materials in order to determine the extent of replacement of non-renewable sources with these types of renewable energy. One of the results of the intensive fruit-growing process, in post pruning stage, is large amount of pruned biomass waste. Based on the calculated biomass (kg ha-1) from intensively grown woody fruit crops that are most grown in Croatia (apple, pear, apricots, peach and nectarine, sweet cherry, sour cherry, prune, walnut, hazelnut, almond, fig, grapevine, and olive) and the analysis of combustible (carbon 45.55-49.28%, hydrogen 5.91-6.83%, and sulphur 0.18-0.21%) and non-combustible matters (oxygen 43.34-46.6%, nitrogen 0.54-1.05%, moisture 3.65-8.83%, ashes 1.52-5.39%) with impact of lowering the biomass heating value (15.602-17.727 MJ kg-1), the energy potential of the pruned fruit biomass is calculated at 4.21 PJ

Stimulation of Wood Degradation by Daedaleopsis confragosa and D. tricolor

Biological pretreatment of the lignocellulosic residues, in which white-rot fungi have a crucial role, has many advantages compared to the chemical, physical, and physico-chemical methods of delignification and therefore attracts increasing scientific attention. Regarding the fact that properties and capacities of the ligninolytic enzymes of Daedaleopsis spp. are still unknown, the aim of this study was to research how nitrogen sources and inducers affect the potential of Daedaleopsis confragosa and Daedaleopsis tricolor to degrade cherry sawdust. NH4NO3, (NH4)2SO4, and peptone were tested as nitrogen sources, while veratryl alcohol, p-anisidine, vanillic acid, and phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride were the studied inducers. As Mn-dependent peroxidase and laccase were the leader enzymes and cherry sawdust/peptone medium the best stimulator of their activities, the effect of inducers on delignification potential of these species was studied during fermentation of that substrate. Veratryl alcohol was the best stimulator of laccase and phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride of Mn-dependent peroxidase activity (27,610.0 and 1338.4 U/L, respectively). These inducers also increased cherry sawdust delignification selectivity, particularly in D. tricolor in the presence of phenylmethylsulfonyl fluoride (lignin:hemicellulose:cellulose = 32.1%:0.9%:11.7%). Owing to the presented results, studied species could have an important role in the phase of lignocellulose pretreatment in various biotechnological processes. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature