The seminar will be at 3:00pm June 21 in the Fu Room (POTR 234).

Enzymatic Liquefaction of Untreated Corn Stover

Neal Hengge

There is an ever increasing need for renewable alternatives to fossil fuels derived from petroleum. This makes feedstocks in the form of lignocellulosic biomass attractive substrates for the production of ethanol and value added chemicals. However, the economics of converting lignocellulosic materials involve high processing costs attributed with pretreatment of the biomass and the use of enzymes for saccharification. Corn stover was obtained for the examination of an upstream processing step to transform the material into a pumpable slurry for subsequent pretreatment and saccharification. Biomass liquefaction was carried out using a specific enzyme cocktail at 50°C with a mixing speed of 290 RPM using a dual-impeller design. Solids were added in a fed-batch manner over a course of 8 hours to reach a final solids concentration of 150 g/L. Slurry viscosity was analyzed in real time to determine the flowability of the mixture. Minor changes to the particle size distribution were observed as liquefaction proceeded. When pretreatment of liquefied material was carried out, an increase in glucose formation was seen over raw, pretreated corn stover. Total glucose formation after pretreatment and enzyme hydrolysis was higher for liquefied material than raw material.

Please email me your seminar title, and abstract!

Date	Seminar
May 17	Planning Meeting
May 24	Leyu Zhang
Thur May 26	Special Guest Seminar: Isaac Emery
May 31	Daehwan Kim David Orrego
June 7	No Seminar (Corn Utilization and Technology Conference)
June 14	Follow-up on Lab Cleanup and Safety Inspection Coordination
June 21	Neal Hengge
June 28	Antonio Santos
July 5	Emma Brace
July 12	Julia Burchell
July 19	Studie Red Corn
July 26	Barron Hewetson Austin Cannella
Aug 2
Aug 9	Samira Fatemi