Estudo de pré - tratamentos de palha e sabugo de milho visando a produção de etanol 2G

Abstract

Petroleum and its derivatives make up the largest portion of Brazil’s current energy matrix. It is well known that these are non-renewable and pollution-causing sources of energy; as such, the last decades have been marked by research and development of new, cleaner technologies. One of them being the hydrolysis of lignocellulosic materials to produce bioethanol. Brazil has an ample variety and large volumes of lignocellulosic biomass like corn husk and corncob. However, these biomass sources have complex structures which give rise to difficulties during the posterior stages of hydrolysis. Thus, it becomes necessary to conduct a pretreatment in order to alter these complex structures and make them more accessible to attack by microorganisms and enzymes. This work investigated two pretreatment methods for biomass coming from corn husk and corncob: pretreatment with dilute sulfuric acid and hydrothermal pretreatment; aiming to determine which method was more suitable for the given experimental conditions. An experimental design method was used to determine the best operating conditions for the acid pretreatment. Chemical characterization was used to evaluate the efficiency of the hydrothermal pretreatment. Both biomass sources were analyzed via Superior Calorific Power (SCP) resulting in17.276,5 J/g for corn husk and 17.872,0 J/g for corncob. Regarding the hydrothermal pretreatment, results showed reduction of the three components of biomass: cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Ideally, cellulose should not be degraded during the pretreatment. Therefore, the conditions leading to the lowest cellulose removal were determined: corn husk pretreatment at 170°C for 15 minutes and corncob pretreatment at 195°C for 10 minutes. The factors evaluated during the sulfuric acid pretreatment were: concentration, heating time and temperature. The two-variable factorial experiment with three replicates suggested that the highest reduced sugar percentages are obtained with low acid concentrations and high temperatures. Moreover, time was not a significant factor. Test 3 and 12 yielded the best results for both sources of biomass. The conditions for test 3 were: 120°C, a 15 minutes heating time and 0,5% sulfuric acid which resulted in 50,9% reduced sugars for corn husk and 42,6% for corncob. The conditions for test 12 were: 110°C, a 7 minutes heating time, and 2% sulfuric acid which resulted in 59,4% reduced sugars for corn husk and 61,5% for corncob.