Two-step pretreatment for improving enzymatic hydrolysis of spent coffee grounds

Abstract

Spent coffee ground has attracted increasing attentions since it contains many useful components such as polysaccharides, protein, lipid and bioactive compounds. The aim of this research is to enhance the enzymatic hydrolysis to release important sugars in spent coffee ground using different pretreatment methods. Spent coffee grounds were pretreated by alkali pretreatment, organosolv pretreatment and the combined process. The pretreated material was hydrolyzed by different commercial enzymes including Cellulast, Pectinex, Ultraflomax and Viscozyme. Monosaccharides, total phenolic content and antioxidant activity in the hydrolysate were measured and evaluated. The use of Viscozyme achieved the highest reducing sugar yield and showed the significant difference from other enzymes. Alkali and organosolv pretreatment demonstrated to improve the production of sugars. The alkali pretreatment followed by organosolv treatment effectively removed lignin, resulting in only 14% lignin in the pretreated sample. The maximum reducing sugar concentration reached 6120 mg/L through two-step pretreatment and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis, corresponding to a yield of 161 mg sugar/g substrate. The spent coffee ground hydrolysate contained 2917 mg/L mannose, 1633 mg/L glucose and 957 mg/L galactose. Phenolic compounds were observed to be released during the enzymatic hydrolysis, giving a total phenolic content of 174.4 mg GAE/L and the SCG hydrolysate also showed an antioxidant capacity equivalent to 263.2 mg/L ascorbic acid after 120 h hydrolysis. This study demonstrated a scalable two-step pretreatment process to obtain important sugars including mannose, glucose, and galactose along with phenolic compounds for further industrial uses.