(587s) Pretreatment of Corn Stover Using Ammonia Circulation Reactor (ACR) for Enhanced Enzymatic Saccharification

Ammonia circulation reactor (ACR) was devised for the effective pretreatment of corn stover. This method is designed to circulate aqueous ammonia continuously so that it can reduce the chemical and water consumption during pretreatment. In this study, ammonia pretreatment with various reaction conditions such as reaction time (4-12 hour), temperature (60-80°C), and solid:liquid ratio (1:3-1:8) were tested. Chemical compositions including solid remaining after reaction, lignin and carbohydrates were analyzed and enzymatic digestibility was also measured. It was observed that as reaction conditions become more severe, lignin removal was significantly affected, which was in the range of 47.6-70.6%. On the other hands, glucan and xylan losses were not substantial as compared to that of lignin. At all tested conditions, the glucan loss was not changed substantially, which was between 4.7% and 15.2%, while the xylan loss varied, which was between 7.4% and 25.8%. With (15 FPU-GC220 + 30 CBU) /g-glucan of enzyme loading, corn stover treated using ammonia circulation reactor for 8-12 hours resulted in 90.1-94.5% of 72-h glucan digestibility, which was higher than 92.7% of Avicel-101. In addition, initial hydrolysis rate (at 24 hour) of this treated corn stover was 73.0-79.4%, which was shown to be much faster than 69.5% of Avicel-101. As reaction time increased, more lignin removal occurred and it was assumed that the enhanced enzymatic digestibility of treated biomass was attributed to the lignin removal.