Authors: Rashmi Kataria, Trevor Woods, William Casey, Federico Cerrone, Reeta Davis, Kevin O’Connor, Rohit Ruhal, Ramesh Babu

Publication Date: 01/01/2018

Journal: Industrial Crops and Products

Volume: 111

Pages: 625-632

Publisher: Elsevier

Lignocellulosic biomass from non-food crops is an attractive renewable source of sugars. These sugars can be used as feedstock for the microbial production of different industrially relevant compounds. Delignification of lignocellulosic biomass is a major challenge in sugar extraction. In the present study, ryegrass biomass (non-food), which is high in carbohydrates, was pre-treated with the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) for effective delignification. Enzymatic hydrolysis of the pre-treated biomass led to the extraction of high sugar levels compared with the raw biomass. Furthermore, these sugars were used for the production of poly-hydroxyalkanoates (PHA), which is an alternative to synthetic polymers. Ryegrass treated with 1% SDS solution at 180 °C showed the maximum delignification. This pre-treated biomass was characterised by TGA, FTIR and SEM and showed successful lignin removal …