Highly efficient conversion of sugarcane bagasse pretreated with liquid hot water into ethanol at high solid loading

Liquid hot water (LHW), an environmental-friendly physico-chemical treatment, was applied to pretreat the sugarcane bagasse (SCB). Tween80, a non-ionic surfactant, was used to enhance the enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated SCB. It found that 0.125 mL Tween80 /g dry matter could make the maximum increase (33.2%) of the glycan conversion of the LHW-pretreated SCB. A self-designed laboratory facility with a plate-and-frame impeller was applied to conduct batch hydrolysis, fed-batch hydrolysis, and the process of high-temperature (50°C) fed-batch hydrolysis following low-temperature (30°C) simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) which was adopted to overcome the incompatible optimum temperature of saccharification and fermentation in the SSF process. After hydrolyzing LHW-pretreated SCB for 120 h with commercial cellulase, the total sugar concentration and glycan conversion obtained from fed-batch hydrolysis were 91.6 g/L and 68.3%, respectively, which were 9.7 g/L and 7.3% higher than those obtained from batch hydrolysis. With Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y2034 fermenting under the non-sterile condition, the ethanol production and theoretical yield obtained from the process of SSF after fed-batch hydrolysis were 55.4 g/L and 88.3% for 72h, respectively, which were 15.5 g/L and 24.7% higher than those from separate fed-batch hydrolysis and fermentation. The result of this work was superior to the reported results obtained from the LHW-pretreated SCB.