Whole slurry saccharification and fermentation of maleic acid-pretreated rice straw for ethanol production

We evaluated the feasibility of whole slurry (pretreated lignocellulose) saccharification and fermentation for producing ethanol from maleic acid-pretreated rice straw. The optimized conditions for pretreatment were to treat rice straw at a high temperature (190 °C) with 1 % (w/v) maleic acid for a short duration (3 min ramping to 190 °C and 3 min holding at 190 °C). Enzymatic digestibility (based on theoretical glucose yield) of cellulose in the pretreated rice straw was 91.5 %. Whole slurry saccharification and fermentation of pretreated rice straw resulted in 83.2 % final yield of ethanol based on the initial quantity of glucan in untreated rice straw. These findings indicate that maleic acid pretreatment results in a high yield of ethanol from fermentation of whole slurry even without conditioning or detoxification of the slurry. Additionally, the separation of solids and liquid is not required; therefore, the economics of cellulosic ethanol fuel production are significantly improved. We also demonstrated whole slurry saccharification and fermentation of pretreated lignocellulose, which has rarely been reported.