Autohydrolysis Pretreatment of Waste Wheat Straw for Cellulosic Ethanol Production in a Co-located Straw Pulp Mill

Waste wheat straw (WWS) is the waste product from feedstock preparation process in a straw pulp mill. It has a significant annual production rate and no commercial value has been explored on this material. In this study, waste wheat straw was pretreated using an autohydrolysis process followed by mechanical refining, and the pretreated materials were further enzymatically hydrolyzed to evaluate the total sugar recovery for bioethanol production. Results show that autohydrolysis at 170 °C for 40 min followed by 6000 revolution PFI refining provided the best result in this study, where a total sugar recovery (total sugars in autohydrolysis filtrate and enzymatic hydrolyzate over total carbohydrates on raw WWS) of 70 % at 4 filter paper unit per oven dry gram (FPU/OD g) substrate enzyme charge could be obtained. The economic evaluation of this biorefinery process indicates that cellulosic ethanol production from autohydrolysis of WWS is a very profitable business, with 28.4 % of internal rate of return can be achieved based on current ethanol wholesale price in China.