Importance of lignin removal in enhancing biomass hydrolysis in hot-compressed water.

Beech wood was pretreated by ethanol/water mixture or sodium chlorite/acetic acid mixture to prepare two representative samples rich in cellulose/lignin and cellulose/hemicellulose, respectively. These samples were then hydrolysed in hot-compressed water (HCW) using a semi-continuous reactor under optimal conditions where the secondary reactions in the liquid products were minimised. The glucose recovery in the primary liquid products from hydrolysis in HCW is enhanced to ∼80% for the cellulose/hemicellulose rich sample from ∼56% for the raw sample, while that for the cellulose/lignin rich sample only increases slightly to ∼64%.

Diauxic growth of Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824 when grown on mixtures of glucose and cellobiose.

Clostridium acetobutylicum, a promising organism for biomass transformation, has the capacity to utilize a wide variety of carbon sources. During pre-treatments of (ligno) cellulose through thermic and/or enzymatic processes, complex mixtures of oligo saccharides with beta 1,4-glycosidic bonds can be produced. In this paper, the capability of C.