Composition, texture and methane potential of cellulosic residues from Lewis acids organosolv pulping of wheat straw

Sandra Constant (1) , Abdellatif Barakat (2) , Mike Robitzer (1) , Francesco Di Renzo (1) , Claire Dumas (3) , Françoise Quignard (1)

1 ICGM - Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier - Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux de Montpellier
2 UMR IATE - Ingénierie des Agro-polymères et Technologies Émergentes
3 LISBP - Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés

Cellulosic pulps have been successfully isolated from wheat straw through a Lewis acids organosolv treatment. The use of Lewis acids with different hardness produced pulps with different delignification degrees. The cellulosic residue was characterised by chemical composition, X-ray diffraction, FT-IR spectroscopy, N2 physisorption, scanning electron microscopy and potential for anaerobic digestibility. Surface area and pore volume increased with the hardness of the Lewis acid, in correspondence with the decrease of the amount of lignin and hemicellulose in the pulp. The non linearity of the correlation between porosity and composition suggests that an agglomeration of cellulose fibrils occurs in the early stages of pulping. All organosolv pulps presented a significantly higher methane potential than the parent straw. A methane evolution of 295 Ncm3/g OM was reached by a moderate improvement of the accessibility of the native straw.

Mots clés: Biodegradability; Epidermal structure; Surface area; Biomass valorisation; Ethanosolv; Homogeneous catalysis

Domaines: Matériaux

Sandra Constant, Abdellatif Barakat, Mike Robitzer, Francesco Di Renzo, Claire Dumas, et al.. Composition, texture and methane potential of cellulosic residues from Lewis acids organosolv pulping of wheat straw. Bioresource Technology, 2016, 216, pp.737-743. ⟨10.1016/j.biortech.2016.06.019⟩. ⟨hal-01330682⟩