Potential of Eucalyptus bark for biofuels production

Abstract

Eucalyptus bark has been identified as novel source of biomass for sustainable production of biofuels. In this work, Eucalyptus nitens bark (EBN) was characterized and evaluated for ethanol production. For that, an experimental design was carried out to optimize organosolv delignification process in which the variables temperature (170-200 ºC), time (30-90 min) and percentage of ethanol (50-80 %) were studied. Organosolv process was suitable for the fractionation of E. nitens bark in which up to 93 % of glucan recovery and 50 % of delignification were achieved. After organosolv pretreatment, delignified E. nitens samples bark were submitted to simultaneous saccharification fermentation (SSF) using an industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain. Results obtained from SSF assays showed that the variables temperature and time of delignification process had a significant influence on ethanol production. The organosolv pretreatment improved the ethanol yield from 36 to 96 %. The process proposed in this work shows a suitable use of bark residue for biofuel production.