A study of feasibility of pretreatment process to utilize lignocellulosic biomass as materials for biodiesel production

Abstract

Biomass is the most abundant renewable resource in the world and has potential to use as alternative materials to fossil resources for production of chemicals and fuels. For the effective conversion from biomass to biofuels or other chemicals, it requires high efficient hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose or fermentable sugars. In this study, lignocellulosic biomass, rice straw, rice husk, and water hyacinth were pretreated with different chemicals, or pretreated with microwave heating, or with combination of chemicals and microwave heating. Pretreated biomass was saccharified by using commercial cellulase enzymes and released sugar contents were measured. The combination of two pretreatment methods exhibited a synergy effect with 71.77% of the enzymatic sugar conversion. To study the possibility to utilize sugars from saccharified biomass, the de novo biosynthesis of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) in Acinetobacter spp were observed. The key biochemical reaction is the esterification between fatty acyl Co-A and ethanol using diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT). The highest FAEE production up to 1,040±51 mg/l was found in A.baylyi culture that use biomass hydrolysate as a sole carbon source.