Process development for bio-ethanol production using wheat straw biomass

摘要

Wheat straw is nowadays beingconsidered a potential lignocellulosicraw material (LCM) for fuel-ethanolproduction as an alternative to starchor sugar-containing feedstock. In thiswork, the evaluation of processvariables (temperature, residence timeand particle size) autohydrolysispretreatment of wheat straw for ethanolproduction was addressed by means ofdesign of experiments. The recovery ofhemicellulose derived sugars (HDS) inthe liquid fraction and the ethanolproduction of the solid residueobtained after filtration of pretreatedmaterial were considered as responsevariables to different processesconditions.Results show that the optimalconditions were 200 ºC and 30 min,leading to HDS recovery yield of31.88% of HDS content in rawmaterial and ethanol production yieldof 80.1% of theoretical.