Determining Yields in High Solids Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Biomass

As technologies for utilizing biomass for fuel and chemical production continue to improve, enzymatic hydrolysis can be run at still higher solids concentrations. For hydrolyses that initially contain little or no free water (10-40% total solids, w/w), the saccharification of insoluble polymers into soluble sugars involves changes of volume, density, and proportion of insoluble solids. This poses a new challenge when determining the degree of hydrolysis (conversion yield). Experiments have shown that calculating the yield from the resulting sugar concentration in the supernatant of the slurry and using the assumed initial volume leads to significant overestimations of the yield. By measuring the proportion of insoluble solids in the slurry as well as the sugar concentration and specific gravity of the aqueous phase, it is possible to precisely calculate the degree of conversion. The discrepancies between the different ways of calculating yields are demonstrated along with a nonlaborious method for approximating yields in high solids hydrolysis.