Division of Applied Chemical Engineering and EBRC

Gyeongsang National University, Jinju 660-701 Korea

Phone: 82-55-751-5385

Fax: 82-55-753-1803

E-mail: sb_kim@nongae.gsnu.ac.kr

Wastepaper is one of the plentiful and low cost feedstocks for making bioethanol. The distinctive difference of wastepaper from other lignocellulosic material is ink and fillers added in the printing and paper-making processes, which could be another barrier for the enzymatic hydrolysis of wastepaper. A pretreatment method suitable for wastepaper was developed using ammonia with nonionic surfactants (NP series). Effect of surfactant in ammonia solution on digestibility was found to be very significant. Digestibility achieved by the treatment with ammonia and NP-5 was the same as the simultaneous treatment with ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, and NP-5, which means that hydrogen peroxide does not need if surfactant is added in ammonia solution. In the ammonia and NP-5 treatment, the effect of input stage of NP-5 on digestibility was also investigated. It was found that surfactant addition in pretreatment stage was a little more effective on cellulose hydrolysis than surfactant addition in enzymatic hydrolysis.