(471f) Liquid Hot Water Pretreatment of Banana Agricultural Waste for Monomeric Sugars Production

Banana agricultural waste represents a regionally-specific and abundant cellulosic material that has potential as a feedstock for producing cellulosic biofuels.  Efficient conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into monomeric sugars requires particle size reduction, pretreatment, and enzymatic hydrolysis.  Liquid Hot Water (LHW) is an effective hydrothermal pretreatment process with potential for industrial application that must be optimized in terms of the temperature, reaction time, particle size of biomass, water:solids ratio that can vary depending upon the characteristics of the lignocellulose. We present the optimization of LHW pretreatment of banana agricultural waste for temperatures between 180 and 220 ^oC, at times between 0 and 60 min, particle size of 0.420 and 6.35 mm, and solids loadings of 5 and 15% dry matter (w/w). The highest saccharification yields of glucose occurred after pretreatment at 220 ^oC for 20 min.  While these conditions resulted in extraction of nearly all of the hemicellulose, the yield of xylose and arabinose was lowered by the presence of alkali in the raw material which catalyzed degradation.