Ethanol Production from Sugarcane Bagasse Pretreated by Steam Explosion

Bioethanol is an alternative renewable fuel that can be produced from cellulosic biomass through hydrolysis and fermentation based processes. Sugarcane bagasse constitutes a potential lignocellulosic substrate for bioethanol production, since it has high sugar content and is a renewable, cheap and readily available feedstock. In this work, steam explosion pretreatment at different temperatures (200°C, 215°C and 230°C) for 5 min was evaluated on sugarcane bagasse for ethanol production by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF). Sugar recovery in the solid and liquid fraction obtained after pretreatment and the enzymatic digestibility of the pretreated material were used to determine the optimum temperature, 215°C for 5 min, which resulted in an overall glucose yield of 86.8% of the content in raw material. The solid fraction of sugarcane bagasse pretreated at 215°C was submitted to SSF at increasing solid loading and the effect of xylanase supplementation and a presaccharification step was assessed. The highest final ethanol concentration (56.3 g L-1) was achieved with SSF supplemented with xylanase enzyme at 20% of solid concentration. Ethanol yields exceeded 0.30 g per gram of glucose in all the conconditions tested. The results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness of steam explosion in the treatment of sugarcane bagasse fiber