Effects of cutting orientation in poplar wood biomass size reduction on enzymatic hydrolysis sugar yield

Published Date
Bioresource Technology
October 2015, Vol.194:407–410, doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2015.07.061
Short Communication

Author 

• Meng Zhang ^a,,
 
• Xiaohui Ju ^b,c
 
• Xiaoxu Song ^a
 
• Xiao Zhang ^b
 
• Z.J. Pei ^a
 
• Donghai Wang ^d

• aDepartment of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, United States
• bSchool of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, Washington State University, Richland, WA 99354, United States
• cSchool of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture 305-8571, Japan
• dDepartment of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, United States

Received 2 June 2015. Revised 17 July 2015. Accepted 18 July 2015. Available online 22 July 2015. 

Highlights

• •
  Cutting orientation had significant effects on poplar substrate’s digestibility.
• •
  Optimum cutting orientation produced substrates with large enzyme accessible area.
• •
  Particle size was a weak predictor of poplar substrate’s digestibility.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to understand how cutting orientation in poplar wood biomass size reduction affects enzymatic hydrolysis sugar yield of wood particles. A metal cutting (milling) machine was used to produce poplar wood particles from three cutting orientations. Results showed that cutting orientation significantly affected enzymatic hydrolysis sugar yield of wood particles. In this study, size reduction from the optimum cutting orientation produced 50% more sugars than the other two cutting orientations. Particles from the cutting orientation with the highest sugar yield had a large enzyme accessible area (125 mg orange dye/g biomass, as evaluated by Simons’ stain procedure) and low crystallinity (50% crystallinity index, as calculated by the Segal method). Furthermore, small particle size did not necessarily lead to improvement in enzymatic digestibility.

Keywords

Crystallinity

Enzymatic hydrolysis

Orientation

Particle size

Surface area

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 Table 1

Table 1.

Fig. 1.

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Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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