title: Pretreatment on Miscanthus lutarioriparious by liquid hot water for efficient ethanol production.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The C4 perennial grass Miscanthus giganteus has proved to be a promising bio-energy crop. However, the biomass recalcitrance is a major challenge in biofuel production. Effective pretreatment is necessary for achieving a high efficiency in converting the crop to fermentable sugars, and subsequently biofuels and other valued products.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Miscanthus lutarioriparious was pretreated with a liquid hot water (LHW) reactor. Between the pretreatment severity (PS) of 2.56-4.71, the solid recovery was reduced; cellulose recovery remained nearly unchanged; and the Klason lignin content was slightly increased which was mainly due to the dissolving of hemicellulose and the production of a small amount of pseudo-lignin. The result shows that a LHW PS of 4.71 could completely degrade the hemicellulose in Miscanthus. Hemicellulose removal dislodged the enzymatic barrier of cellulose, and the ethanol conversion of 98.27% was obtained.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study demonstrated that LHW served as an effective pretreatment in case that Miscanthus lutarioriparious was used for ethanol production by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation. The combination and the pretreatment method of Miscanthus feedstock holds a great potential for biofuel production.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, People's Republic of China. super_xujian@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Hong-Qiang
authors.initials: HQ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Cheng-Lan
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sang
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu