Biotech Updates

Pretreatment of Tea Oil Fruit Hull Using Acetic Acid Organosolv and Alkaline Hydrogen Peroxide

April 12, 2017
https://biotechnologyforbiofuels.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13068-017-0777-1

The tea oil fruit hull (TOFH) is mainly made up of lignocellulose and bioactive substances. Previous studies have already developed a two-stage solvent-based process, which includes an atmospheric glycerol organosolv (AGO) pretreatment, for bioprocessing of the TOFH into diverse bioproducts. However, the AGO pretreatment is not as selective as expected in removing the lignin from TOFH.

Song Tang led a team of scientists from Jiangnan University and Hunan Academy of Forestry in China, and the Queensland University of Technology in Australia to evaluate the use of acetic acid organosolv (AAO) as pretreatment for TOFH. AAO was optimized to fractionate the TOFH selectively. Alkaline hydrogen peroxide (AHP) pretreatment was then used for further delignification.

Results indicate that the AAO–AHP pretreatment had an extremely good selectivity at component fractionation, resulting in 92% delignification and 88% hemicellulose removal, with 87% cellulose retention. The pretreated substrate presented a remarkable enzymatic hydrolysis of 85%.

The AAO–AHP pretreatment can be an environmentally safe approach for pretreatment of the agroforestry biomass.