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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Peoria, Illinois » National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research » Bioenergy Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #287974
Title: Production of ethanol and furfural from corn stover

Author
item Saha, Badal
item AVCI, AYSE - Sakarya University
item YOSHIDA, TSUYOSHI - Kyushu University
item Dien, Bruce
item Kennedy, Gregory - Greg
item Cotta, Michael
item SONOMOTO, KENJI - Kyushu University

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/7/2013
Publication Date: 4/11/2013
Citation: Saha, B.C., Avci, A., Yoshida, T., Dien, B.S., Kennedy, G.J., Cotta, M.A., Sonomoto, K. 2013. Production of ethanol and furfural from corn stover [abstract]. Americal Chemical Society. Paper No. CELL 293.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Corn stover has potential for economical production of biofuels and value-added chemicals. The conversion of corn stover to sugars involves pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis. We have optimized hydrothermal, dilute H2SO4 and dilute H3PO4 pretreatments of corn stover for enzymatic saccharification and fermentation to fuel ethanol by a recombinant bacterium in which the production of fermentation inhibitors such as furfural and hydroxymethyl furfural were minimized so that there was no need for detoxification of the hydrolyzates. Also we have developed a method for efficient production of furfural, an important chemical used in several industries. Furfural is the degradation product of pentose sugars produced from the hemicellulosic fraction of biomass during typical H2SO4 pretreatment at high temperature. We have optimized the pretreatment conditions using dilute H3PO4 for maximum furfural production from corn stover. The solid residue containing cellulose fraction was converted to ethanol by Saccharomyces cerevisiae using simultaneous saccharification and fermentation.