Saccharification yield through enzymatic hydrolysis of the steam-exploded pinewood

Pressure, temperature, and retention time are the most studied parameters in steam explosion pretreatment. However, this work aimed to fix these parameters and to evaluate the influences of several less investigated steam explosion parameters on the saccharification yield in hydrolysis. In this study, firstly, pinewood samples smaller than 200 μm were treated with steam explosion at 190 °C for 10 min. The variable parameters were biomass loading, N2 pressure, and release time. Steam-exploded samples were hydrolyzed with the Trichoderma reesei enzyme for saccharification for 72 h. The sugar content of the resultant products was analyzed to estimate the yield of sugars (such as glucose, xylose, galactose, mannose, and arabinose). The best glucose yield in the pulp was achieved with 4 g of sample, N2 pressure of 0.44 MPa, and short release time (22 s). These conditions gave a glucose yield of 97.72% in the pulp, and the xylose, mannose, galactose, and arabinose yields in the liquid fraction were found to be 85.59%, 87.76%, 86.43%, and 90.3%, respectively.