(420f) A Kinetic Model for the Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Lignocellulose for Ethanol Production

In order to make the lignocellulosic ethanol a commercially attractive industry and compete with the corn ethanol and oil industry, several points in the lignocellulose process needs to be improving. Among these challenge, the improvement of the enzymatic hydrolysis is one of the most important due to the high enzyme cost. The optimization of the enzymatic hydrolysis depends on the development of hydrolytic kinetic models that may accurately quantify the cellulose conversion, hydrolysis rate and the variables that slowdown the process. Furthermore, a robust model is needed to develop rate expressions that can be incorporated into process models which can be used to the size, optimize and techno-economic evaluate the lignocellulose ethanol production. Therefore, a kinetic model was developed for the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose that provides guidance on the adjustments of enzyme dosage and hydrolytic time. The model successfully predicted the production of glucose at different enzyme loadings (20 and 40 FPU/ g cellulose) and pretreatment conditions. The proposed model considers the lost of enzyme due to the lignin-enzyme interactions, which offers the opportunity to relate the pretreatment and hydrolysis processes. The developed model offers the opportunity to study the pretreatment and hydrolysis relation and to techno-economically evaluate the viability of different pretreatment and hydrolysis conditions for the ethanol production.