Preshanthan Moodley
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Title: Comparative study of dilute acid pretreatment techniques for fermentable sugar production from sugarcane leaves (Saccharum officinarum)
Biography
Biography: Preshanthan Moodley
Abstract
Agricultural biomass such as sugarcane leaves are a potential feedstock for biofuel production. Annually, approximately 1.6 billion tons of sugarcane is produced and the leaves are disposed either by landfill dumping or burning which has serious repercussions for the environment. This paper examines the pattern of release of xylose and glucose from sugarcane leaves subjected to various acidic pre-treatment regimes of HCl, H2SO4 and HNO3 under varied input parameters of acid concentration, solid to liquid ratio, treatment time and temperature. The Response Surface Methodology was used to generate six process models for xylose and glucose prediction with respect to the acid type. The Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that all models were significant with coefficients of determination (R2) ranging between 0.78 and 0.93. Process optimization using the developed models and experimental validation gave xylose and glucose yields of 78g/L and 11.48g/L, 50.75g/L and 7.15g/L, 30.82g/L and 3.99g/L for HCl, H2SO4 and HNO3 based pre-treatment respectively. Thus HCl based pre-treatment with acid concentration of 4.90%, solid to liquid ratio of 47.26%, treatment time of 84 minutes and temperature at 99oC gave the highest yield of fermentable sugars with a xylose to glucose ratio of 6.8: 1. These data showed a significant improvement with a 15 fold increase in xylose and glucose compared to previous studies and highlights the suitability of sugarcane leaves as an excellent source of fermentable sugars for the production of biofuels.
