New approaches in pretreatment methods of beech particles in enzymatic hydrolysis – effect of impregnation time and reactor selection

Waste dendromass is one of the least used types of biomass and together with waste from the harvesting and processing of agricultural crops, belongs to the wastes that have a high potential for the second-generation ethanol production. Mass concentration of biofuel added to fossil fuels is established by law and this concentration is determined within the reference values for each year. For example, for 2021 it was 8.0 % and for years from 2022 to 2030 the value will increase to 8.2 %. Biofuels in the so-called reference value in the total fuel content have been mandatory since 2017, while the specific reference value is calculated from the energy content of the total amount of fuels placed on the market. This paper provides initial considerations and pilot results based on experimental data obtained in our workplace concerning the application potential of selected type of dendromass – beech particles from the point of view of their pretreatment by steam explosion and steam extrusion for potential production of liquid biofuels based on lignocellulosic biomass. We compared temperature courses of the mentioned pretreatment methods and pretreated samples were tested by enzymatic hydrolysis. Enzymatic hydrolysis results showed that steam explosion and steam extrusion led to concentration enhancement of fermentable monosaccharides compared to original samples depending on used pretreatment method.