Yeshona Sewsynker
University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
Title: A two-stage hybrid pretreatment for enhanced enzymatic digestibility from corn cobs
Biography
Biography: Yeshona Sewsynker
Abstract
This study focused on the effect of a combination of sulfuric acid and zinc chloride on the pretreatment of Corn cobs for sugar recovery and enzymatic digestibility. The first stage was a combination of zinc chloride and sulfuric acid which was autoclaved at 121ºC for 60 min. A solid to liquid ratio of 10% was used. The second stage was enzymatic hydrolysis using Cellic Ctec 2. Preliminary assessment of this hybrid pretreatment technique under a sulfuric acid concentration of 1.5%, zinc chloride concentration of 3M, enzyme loading of 10 FPU, and reaction time of 48 hr, resulted in a 75% increase in the glucose recovery compared to a single stage enzymatic hydrolysis. In addition, the two-stage method led to a 100% and 81% increase in the glucose recovery compared to the single stage zinc chloride and sulfuric acid pretreatments, respectively. These results evidently support that the combined ZnCl-H2SO4 with enzymatic pretreatment is an effective and feasible method for processing lignocellulosic biomass.