Poplar biomass is a promising source for the 2nd generation biofuels production. It is fast growing species with the possibility of carbohydrates content increase after genetic modification. Enzymatic hydrolysis of carbohydrates is one of the way of its processing and bioalcohols are the final product then. Before it is processed, material may be submitted to physical or chemical pretreatment (steam treatment was chosen to perform in this work) in order to degrade polysaccharides initially and develop its porous structure in order to increase the accessibitlity for enzymes during hydrolysis. Generally mesopores and macropores are available for enzymes, while high volume of micropores is the disadvantage. To analyze pore size distribution before and after treatment, proper method of porosity analysis must be chosen. The aim of this work is to compare three different methods of pore size distribution. These are: the most known nitrogen absorption method, inverse size exclusion chromatography (ISEC) and thermoporometry method. The way of sample preparation, measurement performance and first of all, theoretical assumptions of methods are completely different and completely different information is given as the result. That is why the choice should be well considered.
Keywords: poplar, pretreatment, porosity, pore size distribution, enzymatic hydrolysis
Authors
Zielenkiewicz T.
Department of Wood Science and Wood Protection, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw
Szadkowski J.
Department of Wood Science and Wood Protection, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw
Radomski A.
Department of Wood Science and Wood Protection, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw
Gołofit T.
Division of Highenergetic Materials, Faculty of Chemistry, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw
Lewandowska A.
Department of Wood Science and Wood Protection, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw
Marchwicka M.
Department of Wood Science and Wood Protection, Warsaw University of Life Sciences, Warsaw
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