Advanced oxidation processes in the treatment of corn stalks
Sustainable Chemistry and Pharmacy(2023)
Abstract
The depletion of fossil fuel reserves and severe environmental damage, resulting in climate change and global warming lead to a necessary shift to alternative renewable resources. Lignocellulose is a valuable feedstock for biorefineries, but its conversion is hindered by the limitations of conventional pretreatments lacking selectivity. This step should also be cost-effective and sustainable. In this paper, combined advanced oxidation techniques were applied for the treatment of corn stalks as a pretreatment for enzymatic hydrolysis. Their effect on delignification and cellulose digestibility was monitored. The combined non-thermal plasma/Fenton treatment appears to be suitable for breaking the complex lignocellulose structure, with a lignin content decrease of 39%. This treatment enhanced carbohydrate hydrolysis, resulting in 2.25 times increase in hexose yield, compared to the untreated sample. Long-term plasma treatment positively affected the textural properties, total porosity, and pore size diameter, of lignocellulose biomass. It enables the creation of materials with a stable system of pores and channels, for the unhindered diffusion of large organic molecules such as enzymes. Additionally, a combination of plasma treatment with Fenton reaction increased selectivity towards lignin degradation in comparison to independently applied Fenton treatment. This could be a significant advantage for a bottleneck in the current valorization of biomass.
MoreTranslated text
Key words
Non-thermal plasma,Fenton process,Biorefinery,Lignocellulosic biomass
AI Read Science
Must-Reading Tree
Example
Generate MRT to find the research sequence of this paper
Chat Paper
Summary is being generated by the instructions you defined