Green coconut mesocarp pretreated by an alkaline process as raw material for bioethanol production.

Cocos nucifera L., coconut, is a palm of high importance in the food industry, but a considerable part of the biomass is inedible. In this study, the pretreatment and saccharification parameters NaOH solution, pretreatment duration and enzyme load were evaluated for the production of hydrolysates from green coconut mesocarp using 18% (w/v) total solids (TS).

Development of a D-xylose fermenting and inhibitor tolerant industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain with high performance in lignocellulose hydrolysates using metabolic and evolutionary engineering.

Background: The production of bioethanol from lignocellulose hydrolysates requires a robust, D-xylose-fermenting and inhibitor-tolerant microorganism as catalyst. The purpose of the present work was to develop such a strain from a prime industrial yeast strain, Ethanol Red, used for bioethanol production.

Results: An expression cassette containing 13 genes including Clostridium phytofermentans XylA, encoding D-xylose isomerase (XI), and enzymes of the pentose phosphate pathway was inserted in two copies in the genome of Ethanol Red.

Characterization of novel varietal floral hop aromas by headspace solid phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/olfactometry.

In this study, headspace solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) were optimized and implemented to investigate the volatile composition of novel floral hop essences prepared from four German aroma hop varieties. In total, 91 different constituents were assigned, which were further grouped into monoterpene hydrocarbons, esters, ketones, aldehydes, furans, and oxygenated and nonoxygenated sesquiterpenes. Most volatiles belong to the ester group, whereas the monoterpene hydrocarbon β-myrcene appears to be the predominant compound in all hop oil preparations investigated.

On the origin of free and bound staling aldehydes in beer.

The chemistry of beer flavor instability remains shrouded in mystery, despite decades of extensive research. It is, however, certain that aldehydes play a crucial role because their concentration increase coincides with the appearance and intensity of "aged flavors". Several pathways give rise to a variety of key flavor-active aldehydes during beer production, but it remains unclear as to what extent they develop after bottling.