Steam pretreatment of pine (Pinus patula) wood residue for the production of reducing sugars

Abstract

The study explores the production of reducing sugars from Pinus patula wood residual chips based on steam pretreatment technology. The severity of the steam pretreatment was altered by using two levels of temperature and time and three levels of sulphur dioxide impregnation. The results show that the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis depends on the severity of steam pretreatment. On a given cellulose content, the reducing sugar yield increased from 29% (15.6 g/L) under the mildest steam pretreatment conditions (180 °C, 1.5% SO 2 ) to 91% (42.3 g/L) under the most severe steam pretreatment conditions (225 °C, 3% SO 2 ). In all cases, the enzymatic hydrolysis yield is dependent on enzyme accessibility to the cellulose chains, as the steam pretreatment severity strongly affects biomass fragmentation