Common processes drive the thermochemical pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass

Paul Langan; Loukas Petridis; Hugh M. O'Neill; Sai Venkatesh Pingali; Marcus Foston; Yoshiharu Nishiyama; Roland Schulz; Benjamin Lindner; B. Leif Hanson; Shane Harton; William T. Heller; Volker Urban; Barbara R. Evans; S. Gnanakaran; Arthur J. Ragauskas; Jeremy C. Smith; Brian H. Davison

doi:10.1039/C3GC41962B

Common processes drive the thermochemical pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass†

Paul Langan,^abc Loukas Petridis,^def Hugh M. O'Neill,^ac Sai Venkatesh Pingali,^ac Marcus Foston,‡^g Yoshiharu Nishiyama,^h Roland Schulz,^def Benjamin Lindner,^def B. Leif Hanson,^b Shane Harton,§ⁱ William T. Heller,^a Volker Urban,^ac Barbara R. Evans,^j S. Gnanakaran,^k Arthur J. Ragauskas,^g Jeremy C. Smith^def and Brian H. Davison*^d

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a Biology and Soft Matter Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA

^b Department of Chemistry, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606, USA

^c Center for Structural Molecular Biology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA

^d Bioscience Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA
E-mail: davisonbh@ornl.gov

^e Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA

^f UT/ORNL Center for Molecular Biophysics, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA

^g Institute of Paper Science and Technology, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

^h Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolécules Végétales (CERMAV-CNRS), BP 53, F-38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France

ⁱ Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

^j Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA

^k Theoretical Biology & Biophysics Group, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass, a potentially important renewable organic source of energy and chemical feedstock, resists degradation to glucose in industrial hydrolysis processes and thus requires expensive thermochemical pretreatments. Understanding the mechanism of biomass breakdown during these pretreatments will lead to more efficient use of biomass. By combining multiple probes of structure, sensitive to different length scales, with molecular dynamics simulations, we reveal two fundamental processes responsible for the morphological changes in biomass during steam explosion pretreatment: cellulose dehydration and lignin-hemicellulose phase separation. We further show that the basic driving forces are the same in other leading thermochemical pretreatments, such as dilute acid pretreatment and ammonia fiber expansion.

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Common processes drive the thermochemical pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass†

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Common processes drive the thermochemical pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass

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