21 September 2017 - Predicting biomass saccharification by fluorescence spectroscopy

21 September 2017 - Predicting biomass saccharification by fluorescence spectroscopy

In the frame of the Futurol project dedicated to the production of second generation bioethanol, various biomass samples are pretreated then hydrolyzed before being fermented into ethanol.

Pretreatment conditions must be optimized for each type of biomass, and steam-explosion pretreatment severity strongly influences hydrolysis rate. In order to determine a method to predict hydrolysis through a fast analysis, fluorescence spectroscopy has been tested. Measurement of the fluorescence maximum intensity of pretreated biomass samples was shown to be perfectly correlated to hydrolysis rate. Moreover, fluorescence is also correlated to the content in beta-aryl-ether linkages which connect lignin monolignols. These results show that it is more important to consider lignin composition than its content to explain biomass recalcitrance.

Contact: Dr Gabriel PAËS, gabriel.paes@inra.fr

Read: Auxenfans T, Terryn C, Paës G (2017) Seeing biomass recalcitrance through fluorescence. Scientific Reports 7, 8838.

Modification date : 06 June 2023 | Publication date : 20 September 2017 | Redactor : G. Paës