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

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is a renewable, inexpensive, and abundant resource with high potential for biofuel production to implement the sustainable energy energy worldwide. The bottleneck of biofuel production is the recalcitration of ligoncellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars. Searching for a novel cellulase, a biocatalyst is one of major challenges to promote biofuel production with economic and environmental friendly. Natural microorganism is the great source of cellulase production. Therefore the objective of this research is to identify thermophilic, rapid, efficient cellulose-degrading bacteria from organic fertilizer, rice field, activated sludge, and rain forest in Thailand. More than 300 isolates were screened at 45°C on carboxy-methyl-cellulose (CMC)-containing media to observe the cellulase activity. Using standard filter paper assay, only 9 isolates (S3-10, S3-20, L2-S1, L2-S2, S3-7, L3-S1, L11-S2, L11-S3, and L11-S4) showed high total cellulase activity among other isolates. All isolates then were cultured in media containing 4 different carbon sources; CMC, filter paper, untreated rice straw, nutrient broth (NB), to see effect of substrates on cellulase production. It showed that L2-S2 in Dubois salts media with rice straw could induce high total cellulase activity to 25.57 umole/mg-protein while L11-S3 in NB could induce the highest total cellulase activity to 27.92 umole/mg- protein. Therefore untreat rice straw and NB represented as an effective inducer for cellulase production. A portion of the 16srDNA genes of cellulase positive isolates were amplified and sequenced, then BLASTed to determine species. The results showed that most of isolates are Bacillus sp.