Researchers turn straw into biofuel

Researchers at the Institute of Food Research, UK, are researching how to turn straw from oilseed rape into biofuel.

Straw from crops such as wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape is a potential source of biomass for second generation biofuel production.

Professor Keith Waldron and his team used the facilities at the Biorefinery Centre on the Norwich Research Park, to analyse the procedure needed to unlock sugars in the straw structure.

In particular, they have focused on the pre-treatment stage and steam explosion, which involves ‘pressure-cooking’ the biomass, to prompt a number of chemical reactions.

They varied the temperature and duration of steam explosion and used a variety of physical and biochemical techniques to see what effects varying the pre-treatments had on the different types of sugars before and after saccharification. There was a positive correlation between the amount of cellulose converted to glucose and the severity of the pretreatment.

Another study funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/EPSRC Integrated Biorefining Research and Technology Club, found that uronic acid limited the rate that the enzymes worked. The final sugar yield was closely related to the removal of xylan, a common component of plant cell walls. High amounts of lignin was positively related to the amount of available sugars.