Utilization of Citrus Processing Waste as Renewable Feedstock for Biorefinery Applications: Technical Advances, and Analysis of Engineering Challenges for the pretreatment and Enzymatic Hydrolysis Steps

摘要

An assessment of recent technical advances on pretreatment processes and its effects onenzymatic hydrolysis as the main steps of a proposed citrus processing waste (CPW) biorefinery ispresented. Engineering challenges and relevant gaps in scientific and technical information for reliabledesign, modeling, and scale up of a CPW based biorefinery are also discussed. Some integrated physicochemicalpretreatments are proposed for testing for CPW biomass, including high speed knife-grindingand simultaneous alkali addition. These new proposed processes and the effects of parameters such asparticle size, surface area and morphology, pore volume, and chemical composition of the diversefractions resulting from pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis need to be evaluated and compared forpre-treated and untreated samples of grapefruit processing waste. This assessment suggests the potentialfor filling the data gaps, and preliminary results demonstrate that the reduction of particle size and theincreased surface area for the CPW will result in higher reaction rates and monosaccharide yields for thepre-treated waste material.