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Material flow of cellulose in rice straw to ethanol and lignin recovery by NaOH pretreatment coupled with acid washing

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Abstract

Agricultural residues could become feedstocks for biobased products as they are renewable, carbon neutral, and do not compete with food. In India, > 130 MT rice straw is available annually for alternate uses. Exploiting this abundant biomass for biochemical production will pave way for bio-based economy. Rice straw is highly recalcitrant due to lignin-carbohydrate complex and high ash. For production of value added products, the cellulose fraction is very important and also lignin can be used. However, for overall economic efficiency, it is imperative to separate and recover these fractions maximally from biomass and convert them into high value products at high titers and efficiency. Biomass has to be deconstructed to access these fractions. An improvised pretreatment with sodium hydroxide (NaOH) coupled with acidified water wash enabled high retrieval of cellulose and lignin. More than 80% of cellulose present in raw rice straw was recovered in pretreated solids and lignin (> 65%) recovered from acidification of alkali prehydrolysates/wash waters. Enzymatic hydrolysis of solids with commercial cellulases resulted in 80–100% glucan conversion at 6% and 3% loading respectively yielding ~ 5.5% and 3.3% sugar syrups which can be fermented to value added chemicals. Saccharomyces cerevisiae LN fermented hydrolysates with 77–97% efficiency producing 0.508 gg−1 and 0.403 gg−1ethanol within 24 h consuming all glucose while xylose was unutilized. Material calculations showed that this process converted 63% of cellulose present in rice straw to ethanol potentially yielding 135 L ethanol and ~ 100 Kg lignin per ton of rice straw with limited water use.

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Acknowledgments

Authors are thankful to the Director of Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), Pusa, New Delhi, for providing infrastructure facilities for carrying out this research. Authors acknowledge support by Ms. Jyoti Singh for performing HPLC analysis. Authors are also thankful to Dr. K N Singh and Dr. Mrinmoy Ray from the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) for aiding in statistical analysis of data.

Funding

WS and AS received fellowship from ICAR-AMAAS (Application of Microorganisms in Agriculture and Allied Sectors) India vide grant No. 12-124.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CCUBGA, Division of Microbiology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Wara Samar, Anju Arora, Anubha Sharma, Shalley Sharma & Preeti Nandal

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  1. Wara Samar
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  2. Anju Arora
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  3. Anubha Sharma
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  5. Preeti Nandal
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Contributions

WS carried out the experiments, prepared and edited the manuscript. AA received funding from ICAR-AMAAS (Application of Microorganisms in Agriculture and Allied Sectors) India vide grant No. 12-124, conceptualized the study, designed the experiments prepared and finalized the manuscript. AS carried out the experiments. SS and PN did sugar analyses and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Anju Arora.

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Samar, W., Arora, A., Sharma, A. et al. Material flow of cellulose in rice straw to ethanol and lignin recovery by NaOH pretreatment coupled with acid washing. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 13, 2233–2242 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-021-01278-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-021-01278-3

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