ENZYMATIC HYDROLYSIS OF AGRICULTURAL LIGNOCELLULOSIC BIOMASS

The yield, productivity and cost for the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose to glucoseare crucial for the production of second generation ethanol. In the first study wehave evaluated the activity of several commercial cellulolytic enzymes and a crudeextract of a local strain of Trichoderma viride. The load used was 15 U ofcellulase/gram cellulose and 90 U of cellobiase/gram cellulose. The hydrolysis wascarried out at 50oC and pH 4,8 for 96 hours. The best cellulose hydrolysis yield of58% was obtained with the cocktail formed of crude cellulases from T. virideCMIT3.5 combined with Novozyme 188. This cocktail was used in the second study,when alkaline-steam pretreated wheat straw and corn stover where hydrolyzed at pH4,8 for 96 hours. The temperature was set at 50oC and 40oC. The hydrolysis at lowertemperature was tested for a future experiment of simultaneous hydrolysis andfermentation. An enzymatic assay using glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase wasused to determine exclusively glucose, instead of wide-range sugar DNS assay.Reporting to 100 grams of wet pretreated biomass, the following results wereobtained: 14.4 g% glucose for corn stover at 50oC and 13,0 g% at 40oC; 13,1 g%glucose for wheat straw at 50oC and 10.3 g% at 40oC. Considering that wheat strawcontain 36.6% glucose-based carbohydrates, the hydrolysis yields are between39.3% and 28.1%. Further studies, concerning the optimal parameters for cellulasecocktail will be made.