Sholahuddin Sholahuddin

By Chikako Asada, Sholahuddin and Yoshitoshi Nakamura

Recently, plant biomass has been attracting attention due to global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels. Lignocellulosic biomass (i.e., wood, straw, and bagasse) is attracting attention as an abundant renewable resource that does not compete with the food resources. It is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin and is a potential resource that can be converted into high-value-added substances, such as biofuels, raw materials for chemical products, and cellulose nanofibers. However, due to its complicated structure, an appropriate pretreatment method is required for developing its biorefinery process. Steam explosion is one of the simplest and environmentally friendly pretreatments to decompose lignin structure, which converts cellulose into low-molecular-weight lignin with high efficiency. It has received significant attention in the field of not only biofuel but also biochemical production. Steam explosion involves the hydrolysis of plant biomass under high-pressure steam and the sudden release of steam pressure induces a shear force on the plant biomass. Moreover, it is a green technology that does not use any chemicals. Thus, a steam explosion-based biorefinery system is highly effective for the utilization of lignocellulosic into useful materials, such as ethanol, methane gas, antioxidant material, epoxy resin, and cellulose nanofiber.

Part of the book: Cellulose Science and Derivatives

By Sholahuddin Sholahuddin, Yoshitoshi Nakamura and Chikako Asada

Lignocellulosic biomass as a second-generation biofuel resource such as waste from agricultural, forester industry, and unutilized wood and non-wood biomass was widely reported to use it as feedstock for methane production. As the carbon-neutral resources, biomass waste conversion for biofuel is in line with the SDGs 7 and 15 goal that can meet the needs and qualify to the standard of sustainable consumption and production pattern, and increasing the renewable energy. The wood and non-wood unutilized biomass and biomass waste are commonly faced with the recalcitrant character of the lignocellulose complex (LCC) which impacted the digestion process of the methane fermentation. Steam explosion pretreatment was enhanced the methane production by breaking the LCC into cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin-derived product generated from the pretreatment process. Those steam-exploded products were reported effective in the conversion process into methane. The combination of steam explosion pretreatment which is an environmentally friendly pretreatment, and the use of carbon-neutral resources will provide the green biofuel which helps decrease the greenhouse gasses from the biomass waste dumping process and convert it into sustainable biofuel i.e. methane. This chapter will describe the steam explosion system development on the utilization of biomass for methane production, and the action of methane production enhancement.

Part of the book: Biomass, Biorefineries and Bioeconomy