Physical and chemical characterizations of corn stover and poplar solids resulting from leading pretreatment technologies

In order to investigate changes in substrate chemical and physical features after pretreatment, several characterizations were performed on untreated (UT) corn stover and poplar and their solids resulting pretreatments by ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX), ammonia recycled percolation (ARP), controlled pH, dilute acid, flowthrough, lime, and SO₂ technologies. In addition to measuring the chemical compositions including acetyl content, physical attributes determined were biomass crystallinity, cellulose degree of polymerization, cellulase adsorption capacity of pretreated solids and enzymatically extracted lignin, copper number, FT-IR responses, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) visualizations, and surface atomic composition by electron spectroscopy of chemical analysis (ESCA). Lime pretreatment removed the most acetyl groups from both corn stover and poplar, while AFEX removed the least. Low pH pretreatments depolymerized cellulose and enhanced biomass crystallinity much more than higher pH approaches. Lime pretreated corn stover solids and flowthrough pretreated poplar solids had the highest cellulase adsorption capacity, while dilute acid pretreated corn stover solids and controlled pH pretreated poplar solids had the least. Furthermore, enzymatically extracted AFEX lignin preparations for both corn stover and poplar had the lowest cellulase adsorption capacity. ESCA results showed that SO₂ pretreated solids had the highest surface O/C ratio for poplar, but for corn stover, the highest value was observed for dilute acid pretreatment with a Parr reactor. Although dependent on pretreatment and substrate, FT-IR data showed that along with changes in cross linking and chemical changes, pretreatments may also decrystallize cellulose and change the ratio of crystalline cellulose polymorphs (Iα/Iβ).