Characterization of the pre-treated biomass of Eichhornia crassipes (water hyacinth) for the second generation ethanol production

ABSTRACT

Eichhornia crassipes (water hyacinth), is considered an aquatic pest. An alternative to solve the excess water hyacinth problem is to use the biomass for second generation ethanol. This process can be divided into: collection of biomass pre-treatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation and distillation. Some chemical processes for pre-treatment of biomass water hyacinths were evaluated to determine which procedure degrades the greater amount of lignin and hemicellulose which least affects the cellulose. Characterization was made from the analysis techniques: TG-DTA, XRD and FTIR. The results revealed that the biomass to water hyacinth the most efficient pre-treatment is chemical hydrolysis with sulfuric acid.

KEYWORDS:

• Chemical characterization
• chemical hydrolysis
• pre-treatment
• second-generation ethanol
• water hyacinth

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Prof. Dr. Claudio A. Sansigolo, FCA/UNESP and V. Kushnirov-Melnitzer, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel.

Funding

This work was financially supported by FAPESP under grants (2015/21395-9) and (2015/02136-2), CNPq and CAPES Foundations (Brazil).