Preshanthan Moodley
University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
Title: A combined salt and acid pretreatment for enhanced enzymatic saccharification of waste sugarcane leaves
Biography
Biography: Preshanthan Moodley
Abstract
Zinc cholride and sulfuric acid were employed as chemical catalysts to enhance enzymatic pretreatment of waste suharcane leaves.The effects of salt and acid concentration on the enzymatic digestibility using Novozymes Cellic Ctec 2 were examined at a lab scale. Leaves were pretreated using a combination of 3M ZnCl2 and 1.55 % H2SO4 (v/v) with a solid loading of 10% (w/v) at 121oC for 60 min. After washing, enzymatic saccharification was conducted with an enzyme and solid loading of 10 FPU and 10% respectively. Preliminary results indicated a glucose yield of 9.5 g/L per gram of dry weight sugarcane leaves. This yield showed an improvement over salt treatment and water treatment by 22% and 98% respectively. The next stage in this work will be to optimize the chemical (salt concentration, acid concentration and solid loadind) and enzymatic (enzyme loading, solid loading) pretreatment conditions. These findings illustrate the potential of low-cost chemical pretreatment to enhance glucose recovery from ligncocellulosic materials such as sugarcane leaves.