Integrated Nondestructive Spatial and Chemical Analysis of Lignocellulosic Materials during Pretreatment and Bioconversion to Ethanol
Principal Investigator |
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Gary Peter |
University of Florida |
Co-Investigators |
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Stephen Blackband |
University of Florida |
Lonnie Ingram |
University of Florida |
Richard Yost |
University of Florida |
Project Overview: Bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol involves four main operations: pretreatment, hydrolysis or saccharification, fermentation, and distillation. While improvement in each of these steps is required to make the cost of bioethanol more competitive with nonrenewable fuels, pretreatment and saccharification of the biomass are critical first steps. A number of pretreatment methods increase the yield of fermentable sugars over non-pretreated biomass. However, our fundamental knowledge of what changes pretreatment causes in biomass architecture, permeability, cellular structure, subcellular distribution, composition and organization of polymers in lignocellulosic cell walls and how these changes promote or inhibit digestion by cellulases remains limited. This limited knowledge exists despite rapid advancements in noninvasive, quantitative imaging technologies from other fields of research. Our long-term goal is to develop a quantitative structural model for changes that occur in the organization and chemical composition of plant biomass during pretreatment, enzymatic degradation and bioconversion to ethanol or other products. The objectives of this proposal are to 1) use advanced high resolution magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM), micro and nano x-ray computed tomography (x-ray CT), electron microscopy and imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) to quantify changes in the architecture, porosity, permeability, surface area, pore size, interconnectivity, chemical organization and composition of corn stover and particularly Populus and pine wood chips during pretreatment and enzymatic degradation, and 2) integrate the results from these different quantitative imaging methods into a model for disassembly of the plant cell wall during pretreatment and bioconversion.