Project description:
There is a growing interest to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources such as lignocellulosic biomass and convert this into fuels, e.g. bioethanol and chemicals in the so called integrated biorefinery process. A major obstacle to competitive biomass utilisation is the lack of cost-effective technologies for processing lignocellulosic biomass into fermentable sugars. The natural cellulose is very resistant to enzymatic breakdown and a pretreatment is needed to make the crystalline structure of cellulose more susceptible to depolymerization. So far, ionic liquids have shown promising results in solubilizing lignocellulosic biomass. However, the usual cellulases are inhibited in most ionic liquids. The aim of this project is to develop a new form of cellulose-lysis enzymes that have super-termostability, high activity and are resistant to solvent inhibition. This will be done using the so-called “enzyme biofluid” concept, where the enzymes are enclosed in an anionic polymer corona. Another aim is to develop an ionic liquid processing system for the deconstruction and enzymatic breakdown of lignocellulosic biomass to produce fermentable sugars in high yield and with a high efficiency.
Project title: Saccharification of lignocellulosic biomass, can super-thermostable “enzyme biofluid” be a new pathway
Main supervisor: Associate Professor Zheng Guo
Co-supervisors: Dr Bianca Pérez de Lucani
