Valorising of Wheat Straw by Applying Combined Liquid Hot Water and Ethanol Organosolv Pretreatment

The production of chemicals from renewable sources like lignocellulosic agricultural side products is widely seen as an important contribution to a sustainable future economy. Lignocellulosic biomass can be fractionated into its main components cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin by Liquid Hot Water (LHW) or Ethanol Organosolv (EO) treatment. In order to optimize the biomass fractionation towards clean single components we investigated the sequential LHW and EO treatment of wheat straw. The release of carbohydrates and lignin was tracked over the treatment time. The experiments showed, that the treatment time should not exceed 30 min at 180 °C for each treatment. Furthermore, kinetic models for glucan and xylan fractionation during both treatments were created.