Sweet Sorghum Biorefinery for Production of Fuel Ethanol and Value-added Co-products

Nghiem, N. P. and Nguyen, C. M. and Drapcho, C. M. and Walker, T. H. (2012) Sweet Sorghum Biorefinery for Production of Fuel Ethanol and Value-added Co-products. In: Nanotechnology 2012: Bio Sensors, Instruments, Medical, Environment and Energy. Nano Science and Technology Institue, Cambridge, USA, pp. 475-478. ISBN 978-1-4665-6276-9

[img] PDF - Published Version
Restricted to ICRISAT researchers only

Abstract

A biorefinery has been developed where all carbohydrate components of sweet sorghum are used as feedstocks. First, the juice is extracted from the stalks. The resulted straw then is pretreated using the soaking in aqueous ammonia (SAA) process to enhance subsequent enzyme hydrolysis for production of fermentable sugars. The SAA process is chosen for sweet sorghum straw pretreatment because it does not result in significant losses of cellulose and hemicellulose as in several other pretreatment processes. Following pretreatment the straw is hydrolyzed with commercial enzyme product containing high hemicellulase activity. The xylose-rich solution obtained after solid/liquid separation is used for production of value-added co-products using suitable microorganisms. The value-added co-products may include astaxanthin, succinic acid, lactic acid, butyric acid, itaconic acid, xylitol, and others. The residual solids are hydrolyzed with commercial enzyme product containing high cellulase activity with the juice extracted in the first step being used as make-up water. By combining the sugar in the juice with the glucose released from the residual solids by enzyme hydrolysis high ethanol concentrations can be achieved, which results in lower distillation cost than if pure water is used for enzyme hydrolysis and subsequent fermentation as normally performed in cellulosic ethanol production.

Item Type: Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords: sweet sorghum, fuel ethanol, biomass bioconversion, biorefinery, value-added products
Author Affiliation: Eastern Regional Research Centre, USDA Agricultural Research Service, US
Subjects: Postharvest Management > Food Technology
Divisions: Sorghum
Depositing User: Mr Siva Shankar
Date Deposited: 18 Jul 2012 11:45
Last Modified: 18 Jul 2012 11:48
Official URL: http://www.nsti.org/procs/Nanotech2012v3/7/W2.223
URI: http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/6863

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item
EPrints Logo
eprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.