Large-scale pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass
for bioethanol production in a pilot plant
José Antonio Pérez Jiménez*, Manuel Jesús Díaz Villanueva, Guadalupe Pinna Hernández
Department of Biomass, CTAER Andalucía Foundation, Scientific and Technology Park, GEOLIT, Jaén (Spain)
*Corresponding e-mail: joseantonio.perez@ctaer.com
RELATED WORKS IN LABORATORY SCALE
INTRODUCTION
Mediterranean Biomass is an attractive lignocellulosic substrate
for bioconversion to second generation ethanol because it has
high carbohydrate content and is present in large quantities in
Andalucía (Spain). For efficient ethanol production from this
kind of biomass by biochemical pathway it should be firstly
pretreated to make the cellulose more accesible to enzymatic
hydrolisis and to recover more effectively the hemicellulose.
Although hydrotermal pretreatments have been studied (at
laboratory scale) only few papers can be found in the literature
about the use of a high scale liquid hot water (LHW) treatment to
fractionate this material. As main advantages, LHW improves the
recovery of the pentoses and produces hydrolysate that results in
little or no inhibition of solubilized sugar fermentation.
OLIVE TREE PRUNNING
LHW (210 ºC, 10 min)
(Cara et al. 2007)
SUNFLOWER STALKS
LHW (220 ºC, 5 min)
(Díaz et al. 2011)
4.5 kg of
solid fraction
6.7 kg of
solid fraction
1 L ethanol
1 L ethanol
MATERIALS AND METHODS
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS OF PILOT PLANT
LOAD REACTOR
DOWNLOAD
REACTOR
HEAT SYSTEM
CONTROL
FILTRATION
LOAD REACTOR
SATAINLESS STEEL: AISI 316L
TOTAL CAPACITY: 100 LITRES
DESIGN PRESSURE: 50 bar.
MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE OF WORKING: 240 ºC
INNER DIAMETER: 450 mm
HEIGHT: 560 mm
HEAT: DUAL CHAMBER THERMAL-FLUID
AGITATION: MECHANICAL (1.5 KW 1500 RPM)
DOWNLOAD REACTOR
SATAINLESS STEEL: AISI 316L
TOTAL CAPACITY: 300 LITRES
DESIGN PRESSURE: 8 bar.
MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE OF WORKING: 240 º C
INNER DIAMETER: 720 mm
HEIGHT: 700 mm
COOLING: DUAL CHAMBER WITH WATER
AGITATION: MECHANICAL (1.5 KW 1500 RPM)
RAW MATERIAL
(LIGNOCELLULOSIC)
PRETREATMENT
(LHW)
SOLID FRACTION
LIQUID FRACTION
(HYDROLYSATE)
ENZYMATIC HYDROLYSiS
FERMENTATION
FERMENTATION
ANALYTICAL METHODS
The raw material composition is determined according to the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory analytical methods for
biomass.
PILOT PLANT IN LABORATORY BIOMASS
ETHANOL
ETHANOL
CONCLUSIONS
i. Evaluate pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation conditions for bioethanol production process from lignocellulosic material at large-scale is essential to determine process optimum
conditions which lead to industrial implementation of this technology.
ii. Cellulose is the main carbohydrate source to be used for hydrolysis and fermentation into ethanol. Therefore, to provide high cellulose content residues after pretreatment avoiding cellulose
solubilisation is one of the major determinants of pretreatment efficiency.
iii. Statistical designs are used to find the optimal temperature, residence time, pressure, particle size and solid/liquid ratio conditions, considering recovery value of hemicellulose sugars in
prehydrolyzate and cellulose digestibility of solid fraction (measured as enzymatic hydrolysis yield in standard test using commercial cellulases) as response variables.
RELATED WORKS
 Cara C, Romero I, Oliva JM, Sáez F, Castro E . (2007). Liquid hot water pretretment of olive tree pruning
residues. Appl Biochem Biotecnol 136-140, 379-394.
 Pérez JA, Balleteros I, Ballesteros M, Sáez F, Negro JM, Manzanares P . (2008). Optimizing liquid hot water
conditions to enhance sugar recovery from wheat straw for fuel-ethanol production. Fuel 87, 3640-3647.
 Díaz MJ, Cara C, Ruiz E, Pérez-Bonilla M, Castro E. (2011). Hydrotermal pre-treatment and enzymatic
hydrolysis of sunflower stalks.. Fuel 90, 3225-3229.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
-