The organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) usually contains high lignocellulosic and fatty fractions. These fractions are well-known to be a hard biodegradable substrate for biological treatments and its presence involves limitations on the performance of anaerobic processes. To avoid this, thermochemical pretreatments have been applied on the OFMSW coming from a full-scale mechanica...

The effects of n-decanol and cetyl alcohol incorporated into cationic di-n-hexadecyldimethylammonium bromide (DHAB) bilayers on the packing and the resistance against solubilisation by Triton X-100 have been investigated. Solubilisation experiments revealed that the mismatch between the C10-tail of n-decanol with the DHAB-tails does not affect the structural integrity of the vesicles. On the co...

Soaking of cereal grains has been suggested as a method to reduce their phytate content and hence increase their mineral availability. Whole and milled wholegrain, normal and low phytate sorghum and normal maize were studied. Soaking of unmilled sorghum and maize did not result in substantial reductions in phytate or mineral contents. With milled grains, phytate solubilisation was somewhat grea...

This study determined hydrogen production, volatile fatty acids (VFAs) generation and cellulose solubilisation from anaerobic dark fermentation of wheat stalk and showed the effect of different mixed microflora. The cumulative hydrogen yields of anaerobic digested activated sludge (AS)-inoculated and anaerobic digested dairy manure (DM)-inoculated system were 23.3 and 37.0 mL/g VS at 204 h, res...

The aim of the work was to test the hypothesis that at low water content enzyme action on biomass is enhanced when the raw material is in the form of a continuous mass instead of powder/granular form. Effects of two pre-mixing methods, blade-mixing and extrusion, on xylanase action were studied during stationary incubation of wheat bran of different particle sizes, also in comparison with incub...

BACKGROUND The use of a microwave synthesis reactor has allowed kinetic data for the hydrothermal reactions of straw biomass to be established from short times, avoiding corrections required for slow heating in conventional reactors, or two-step heating. Access to realistic kinetic data is important for predictions of optimal reaction conditions for the pretreatment of biomass for bioethanol pr...