Microbial delignification and hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass to enhance biofuel production: an overview and future prospect

Tsegaye, Bahiru; Balomajumder, Chandrajit; Roy, Partha

doi:10.1186/s42269-019-0094-x

Bulletin of the National Research Centre

Table 2 Comparison of biological pretreatment with other pretreatment methods

From: Microbial delignification and hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass to enhance biofuel production: an overview and future prospect

Pretreatment type	Merits or advantages	Common chemicals/solvents used	Constraints/limitation	References
Biological	✓ Low use of energy and chemicals ✓ Able to degrade hemicellulose and lignin ✓ Environmentally sound	–	Have lower hydrolysis rate	Dunlop 2011; Monavari et al. 2009; Dionisi et al. 2014
Organosolv	Able to depolymerize lignin and hemicelluloses	Acetone, formic acid, methanol, ethylene glycol, butanol, ethanol	➢ Needs solvent recycling and draining ➢ Expensive ➢ Inhibitors are produced	Monavari et al. 2009
Steam explosion	Able to depolymerize lignin and hemicelluloses	Steam	➢ Xylan loss ➢ Partial depolymerization of components ➢ Inhibitors are produced	Galbe and Zacchi 2002;Wyman et al. 2005
Alkali treatment	➢ Able to take out lignin and hemicelluloses ➢ Increases the accessibility of the surface	Sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide, ammonia	➢ Washing is required ➢ Salt formation causing fouling problems	Alexandropoulou et al. 2017; Narra et al. 2017
Ozonolysis	➢ Able to depolymerize lignin ➢ No inhibitory production	Ozone	➢ High amount of ozone is required ➢ Expensive	Sun and Cheng 2002
Ammonium fiber explosion	➢ Increases the accessibility of the surface ➢ Able to depolymerize lignin and hemicellulose	Ammonia, water	➢ Efficient problem ➢ Inhibitors are produced	Gupta and Lee 2009
Acid treatment	➢ Able to hydrolyze hemicellulose ➢ Modifies lignin structure	Sulfuric acid, nitric acid	➢ Expensive ➢ Corrosive to equipment ➢ Inhibitors are produced	Pu et al. 2013; Mohapatra et al. 2017

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