Production of renewable chemicals from cellulosic biomass is a critical step towards energy sustainability and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Microbial cells have been engineered for producing fuels and chemicals from cellulosic sugars. Among these chemicals, 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BDO) is a compound of interest due to its diverse applications. While microbial production of 2,3-BDO with high yi...

Energy is considered a prime agent in the generation of wealth and a significant factor in economic development. Recently there is renaissance in utilization of biomass for biofuel production employing cellulases and hence forth in obtaining better yields and novel activities. The present study deals with the bioconversion of cellulose from textile cotton waste into ethanol by using the methods...

Clostridium thermocellum can ferment cellulosic biomass to formate and other end products, including CO2 This organism lacks formate dehydrogenase (Fdh), which catalyzes the reduction of CO2 to formate. However, feeding the bacterium 13C-bicarbonate and cellobiose followed by NMR analysis showed the production of 13C-formate in C. thermocellum culture, indicating the presence of an uncharacteri...

Catechin, a bioflavonoid, found in green tea leaves has various applications in the food and pharmaceutical industries. However, little has been studied about its behavior with fabric-type materials especially in the presence of surfactants. Studying this lays the footstone for understanding the cause of tea stains on fabrics, which is a nuisance as they do not wash off easily or completely eve...

BACKGROUND Intraspecific variations in biomass composition are likely to influence their suitability for biorefining. This may be particularly important in species such as Brassica napus, which contain many different crop types bred for different purposes. Here, straw derived from 17 B. napus cultivars, of varying crop types, were steam exploded, saccharified and fermented to establish differen...

The switchgrass (SG) samples pretreated by cellulose solvent- and organic solvent-based lignocellulose fractionation were characterized by enzymatic hydrolysis, substrate accessibility assay, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), cross polarization/magic angle spinning (CP/MAS) (13)C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Glucan di...

Multilayers with low charge density polyelectrolytes assembled on thin films of cellulose were studied by piezoelectric microgravimetry. The substrates were produced from colloidal suspensions of cotton fibers before and after modification with cationic and anionic groups via epoxy intermediates of quaternary ammonium and carboxymethylation, respectively. Two different levels of ionicity were u...

Ionic liquids (ILs) dissolve lignocellulosic biomass and have a high potential as pretreatment prior to total enzymatic hydrolysis. ILs are, however, known to inactivate cellulases. In this article, enzymatic hydrolysis of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and enzyme binding onto the cellulosic substrate were studied in the presence of cellulose-dissolving ILs. Two different ILs, 1,3-dimethylimi...

We present a time-scale analysis for the enzymatic hydrolysis of solid cellulosic substrates, based on our recently developed kinetic model (Zhou et al., 2009a, Biotechnol Bioeng 104:261-274; Zhou et al., 2009b, Biotechnol Bioeng 104:275-289) which incorporates both enzymatic chain fragmentation and hydrolytic time evolution of the solid substrate morphology. Analytical order-of-magnitude estim...

Cellulosic ethanol has been identified as a promising alternative to fossil fuels to provide energy for the transportation sector. One of the obstacles cellulosic ethanol must overcome in order to contribute to transportation energy demand is the infrastructure required to produce and distribute the fuel. Given a nascent cellulosic ethanol industry, locating cellulosic ethanol refineries and cr...