Pretreatment of Populus tomentosa with Trametes velutina supplemented with inorganic salts enhances enzymatic hydrolysis for ethanol production.

Different nutrients were added into the solid fermentation of woody biomass, Populus tomentosa, to improve pretreatment by a white rot fungus, Trametes velutina. Fungal pretreatment supplemented with trace elements resulted in large amount of lignin loss but low degradation of carbohydrate. Only 12.6 % of Klason lignin was left in the residues pretreated by T. velutina for 8 weeks supplemented with 1 % trace elements (TE group). When fungal-pretreated residues were subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis for 96 h, a maximum reducing sugar yield of 44 % was obtained from the TE group at the 8th week, 2.3 times higher than that of untreated samples. In addition, the highest ethanol yield of 22 % was observed by the fermentation of 8-week pretreated residues from the basic medium plus trace element group, which was five times more than that of untreated samples.