Sustainable and Efficient Sugar Production from Wheat Straw by Pretreatment with Biogas Digestate

The use of liquid fraction of biogas digestate (LFBD) instead of fresh water (hydrothermal) for the pretreatment of wheat straw was evaluated to improve the yield of released sugars during the following hydrolysis step. The pretreatments were conducted at temperatures of 130, 160, and 190 °C for 30 and 60 min. In most of the cases, pretreatment using LFBD led to higher glucose yields and higher total sugars concentrations, compared to those obtained after applying hydrothermal pretreatments. The increase of temperature resulted in an increase in sugars during the enzymatic hydrolysis. The highest yields of glucose (about 59%) were observed after treatments at 190 °C for 60 min, independently of which type of pretreatment was applied and at 190 °C for 30 min using LFBD. Treatment, with LFBD at 190 °C and for 60 min, resulted in glucose and xylose concentrations of 7.36 g L and 2.41 g L, respectively, after the subsequent hydrolysis for 48 h. However, the FTIR analysis indicated that the crystallinity index remained rather constant after treatment. Both FTIR and compositional analysis showed that the removal of hemicelluloses was the main effect of the pretreatment.