A comparative study between the conventional and advanced biomass pretreatment methods applied on the Napier Grass used as a biomass

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the traditional and advanced pretreatment methods on the Napier Grass used as a biomass. It is a perennial C-4 type grass belongs to a sugarcane family, also called as Pennisetum Purpureum. It is found in abundance all across the world and traditionally used as a cattle feed stock in India.The author made an attempt for better effectiveness of the Napier Grass processing towards better productivity by using various pretreatment methods viz: Spectrophotometry, High Performance Liquid Chromatography, Enzyme Hydrolysis and Sonication.Napier Grass has lignocellulosic fibers with structural carbohydrates that requires pretreatment and enzymatically saccharified before they fermented into monomeric sugars and biofuel. The experimentation is carried out to examine the release of structural carbohydrate from Napier Grass using dilute acid pretreatment. In order to accelerate the process, the protein-rich fungus biomass Rhizopus Oligosporus has been added to the crude Napier Grass juice.It has been observed that, if green processed Napier Grass is treated with 5% concentrated sulfuric acid for a time span of 45 min at 120 °C, that results to yield the highest concentration of glucose from hemicellulose and cellulose with the highest quantum of xylose.The experimental result shows an increase in monomeric sugar that released from Napier Grass fibers after enzymatic saccharification process and the xylose and glucose concentrations achieved to 85.5% by dry weight of Napier grass.

Keywords

• Green processing
• Biomass and biofuel
• Napier grass
• Pretreatment
• Monomeric sugar