Journal
ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA SECTION D-STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY
Volume 66, Issue -, Pages 1189-1193Publisher
INT UNION CRYSTALLOGRAPHY
DOI: 10.1107/S0907444910020408
Keywords
switchgrass; dilute acid pretreatment; cellulosic ethanol production; small-angle neutron scattering
Funding
- Office of Biological and Environmental Research, US Department of Energy [FWP ERKP752]
- ORNL Laboratory [S07-019]
- Office of Biological and Environmental Research
- US Department of Energy [DE-AC05-00OR22725]
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Lignocellulosic biomass, which is an abundant renewable natural resource, has the potential to play a major role in the generation of renewable biofuels through its conversion to bioethanol. Unfortunately, it is a complex biological composite material that shows significant recalcitrance, making it a cost-ineffective feedstock for bioethanol production. Small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) was employed to probe the multi-scale structure of cellulosic materials. Cellulose was extracted from milled native switchgrass and from switchgrass that had undergone a dilute acid pretreatment method in order to disrupt the lignocellulose structure. The high-Q structural feature (Q > 0.07 A-1) can be assigned to cellulose fibrils based on a comparison of cellulose purified by solvent extraction of native and dilute acid pretreated switchgrass and a commercial preparation of microcrystalline cellulose. Dilute acid pretreatment results in an increase in the smallest structural size, a decrease in the interconnectivity of the fibrils and no change in the smooth domain boundaries at length scales larger than 1000 A.
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