Review of Alkali-Based Pretreatment To Enhance Enzymatic Saccharification for Lignocellulosic Biomass Conversion

Lignocelluloses have been the focus of much attention, because of their conversion to fermentable sugars for cellulosic ethanol production, both from the viewpoint of energy and the environment. Pretreatment plays a crucial rule in biomass conversion, to overcome the chemical and structural difficulties, which have evolved in lignocelluloses, and to produce a cost-effective fermentable sugar via enzymatic saccharification. Among the developed pretreatment approaches, alkali-based pretreatment technology, which can utilize the equipment and chemical recovery system in the pulping industry, has been considered one of the most promising pretreatment methods, mainly because of its high efficiency in delignification and high final total sugar yields. This paper reviews the classification, mechanism, advantages, disadvantages, and the progress of alkali-based pretreatment technologies, in order to better understand the fundamental principles of alkali-based pretreatments. This is of vital importance for the process improvement and commercial production of alkali-based pretreatment for producing cellulosic ethanol

Co-immobilization of multi-enzyme on control-reduced graphene oxide by non-covalent bonds: an artificial biocatalytic system for the one-pot production of gluconic acid from starch

<p> Here we report a simple and efficient approach to fabricate a new biocatalytic system by co-immobilizing multi-enzyme on chemically reduced graphene oxide (CRGO) via non-covalent bonds. The obtained artificial biocatalyst was characterized by UV/Vis, FTIR, AFM, TEM and SEM. Compared with native and graphene oxide (GO) bounded enzymes, it was found that the glucose oxidase (GOD) or glucoamylase (GA) immobilized on CRGO exhibited significantly higher enzymatic activity, due to the positive effect of the CRGO carrier. This multi-enzyme microsystem was employed as a biocatalyst to accomplish the starchto-gluconic acid reaction in one pot, and the yield of gluconic acid could reach 82% within 2 hours. It was also proved that the stability of the multi-enzyme biocatalyst immobilized on CRGO was dramatically enhanced compared with the GO microsystem. About 85% of the activity of the artificial biocatalyst could be preserved after four cycles. These results demonstrated the feasibility of the novel strategy to construct bio-microsystems with multi-enzyme on 2D CRGO via non-covalent bonds to accomplish some complex conversions.</p