Behavior of cellulose and xylan in aqueous ammonia pretreatment.

The effect of aqueous ammonia on the solubilization of cellulose and xylans was investigated by detecting the amounts of reducing sugars and monosaccharides in the treatment liquors. The degree of cellulose and xylan solubilization increased with the increase of treatment temperature. When the treatment temperature increased from 20 to 90 °C, the amounts of reducing sugars released from Avicel and cellulose fiber by 21 % ammonia at a solid to liquid ratio of 1:10 for 24 h increased from 1.0 and 0.9 to 4.4 and 2.7 mg/g dry matter (DM), respectively. The amounts of reducing sugars released from wheat straw, beechwood, and oat spelt xylans increased from 1.2-7.0 to 3.3-13.5 mg/g DM. Xylans appeared to be more susceptible than cellulose in aqueous ammonia treatment. Structure analysis of untreated and treated Avicel and cellulose fiber showed that aqueous ammonia increased the specific surface area and crystallinity index of cellulose. Most of the cellulose and xylan that were solubilized existed in the form of oligomers such as cello-oligosaccharides and xylo-oligosaccharides. Xylobiose and xylotriose were the main oligosaccharides released from oat spelt xylan by aqueous ammonia treatment as confirmed by electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry. The results here indicated that a slight amount of cellulose and xylans was solubilized and low amounts of cellulase inhibitors, oligomers, were found during mild aqueous ammonia pretreatment process. Therefore, from the economical perspectives, mild ammonia pretreatment would be favorable for aqueous ammonia pretreatment of lignocelluloses.