Luiz Pereira Ramos
Full Professor in Analytical Organic Chemistry at the Federal University of Paraná, with his Ph.D. received from the Ottawa-Carleton Institute of Biology, University of Ottawa, Canada in 1992. Associate Editor of the ACS journal Energy & Fuels and leader of many research activities in the areas of renewable resources and biofuels, with 125 indexed publications for an H factor of 32 and a total of 3333 citations in the SCOPUS database until August 10, 2017. Permanent staff in the UFPR’s graduate programs in Chemistry and Bioenergy.
Factors involving the development of glucan accessibility in pretreated cellulosic materials
Luana Marcele Chiarello, Douglas Henrique Fockink, Giselli Torres da Silva, Luiz Pereira Ramos Research Center in Applied Chemistry (CEPESQ), Department of Chemistry, Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
One of the biggest obstacles for the industrial production of cellulosic ethanol is the degree of association of the main macromolecular components of the plant cell wall. This association involving cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin hinders the access of enzymes to plant polysaccharides, reducing the overall ethanol yields at the later stage of fermentation. Several pretreatment methods have already been used to deconstruct the plant cell wall with the aim to increase the susceptibility of the resulting lignocellulosic materials to enzymatic hydrolysis at high yields. In this work, the chemistry involved in acid-catalysed pretreatment of cane bagasse and eucalypt harvest residues will be addressed with regard to changes in their main macromolecular components and these data will be tentatively correlated with changes in pretreament severity. Results about enzymatic hydrolysis at high total solids using relatively low enzyme loadings of Cellic CTec3 will be presented as well, together with the fermentability of substrate hydrolysates using industrial strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Support: CNPq, Fundação Araucária, Novozymes Latin America, European Union (FP7 and RISE).