Exploiting ozonolysis-microbe synergy for biomass processing: Application in lignocellulosic biomass pretreatment

摘要

Pretreating lignocellulosic biomass is an energy and time consuming process. This study presents anudalternative pretreatment technique, which explores a synergistic approach between ozonolysis andudcellulolytic microorganism-Pseudomonas putida at room temperature. Ozone is a strong oxidative agentudthat reacts with lignin by attacking the carbon-carbon double bonds, while P. putida preferentially hydrolysesudthe exposed cellulolytic parts of the biomass to simple sugars. The results from SEM and FTIRudshow a significant reduction in lignin and cellulose contents, leading to relatively high sugar recovery.udThe glucose concentration increases coincidentally with the ozonation duration and After 24 h however,udthe concentration reached 1.1 mg/ml, a 323% increase compared with results after 2 h. Increasing theudozonation time to 24 h reduced the biological pretreatment time by 50% but crucially, increases microbialudbiomass. This approach has potentially high ramifications particularly for industries exploiting lignocellulosicudbiomass as a feedstock for bioethanol production.