Recalcitrance and structural analysis by water-only flowthrough pretreatment of ¹³C enriched corn stover stem

Journal Article · Fri Aug 28 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Bioresource Technology

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2015.08.065· OSTI ID:1376561

Foston, Marcus ^[1]; Trajano, Heather L. ^[2]; Samuel, Reichel ^[3]; Wyman, Charles E. ^[4]; He, Jian ^[5]; Ragauskas, Arthur J. ^[6]

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1. Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
2. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (Canada)
3. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
4. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of California, Riverside, CA (United States)
5. Washington Univ., St. Louis, MO (United States)
6. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States); Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)

This article presents high temperature water-only continuous flowthrough pretreatment coupled with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as a promising analytical tool to examine the plant cell wall, to understand its recalcitrance (i.e., cell wall resistance to deconstruction), and to probe the chemistry occurring during batch pretreatment of biomass. ¹³C-enriched corn stover stems were pretreated at 170 °C for 60 minutes with a hot-water flow rate of 20 mL/min to control fractionation of the cell wall. This approach helped elucidate the nature of plant cell wall chemical recalcitrance and biomass pretreatment chemistry by tracking cell wall fragmentation as a function of time. Fractions of the reactor effluent were collected in a time-resolved fashion and characterized by various NMR techniques to determine the degree and sequence of fragments released, as well as, the chemical composition, molecular structure, and relative molecular weight of those released fragments.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1376561
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1250352
• Journal Information: Bioresource Technology, Vol. 197; ISSN 0960-8524
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Recalcitrance
Corn stover
Hot-water flowthrough pretreatment
Nuclear magnetic resonance