Pretreatment characteristics of waste oak wood by ammonia percolation

A log of waste oak wood collected from a Korean mushroom farm has been tested for ammonia percolation pretreatment. The waste log has different physical characteristics from that of virgin oak wood. The density of the waste wood was 30% lower than that of virgin oak wood. However, there is little difference in the chemical compositions between the woods. Due to the difference in physical characteristics, the optimal pretreatment conditions were also quite different. While for waste oak the optimum temperature was determined to be 130 degrees C, for virgin oak wood the optimum pretreatment was only achieved at 170 degrees C. Presoaking for 12 h with ammonia solution before pretreatment was helpful to increase the delignification efficiency.