Pretreatment of lignocellulose for biotechnological production of lactic acid

The breakdown of biomass in pretreatment facilitates enzymatic hydrolysis by disrupting cell wall structures, driving lignin into solution or modification of the lignin structure, and reducing cellulose crystallinity and chain length, while preventing hydrolysis of cellulose. In an ideal situation the pretreatment leads to high yields of fermentable sugars with a limited formation of degradation products that inhibit enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation to lactic acid, while remaining cost effective. This review deals with these challenges by providing information on available pretreatment technologies in general (chapter 3), and more specific on pretreatment of the model feedstock sugarcane bagasse (chapter 4). Techno economic studies are described in chapter 5 with the NREL study from 2011 as benchmark. This review starts with characteristics of lignocellulosic biomass in relation to compostion and formation of inhibitors.