Effect of physical pretreatment of wheat straw on the biomass yield and the production of a cellulolytically active extract employing Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Abstract

Agroindustral residues represents an alternative source for obtaining fermentable products, such as glucose, with higher energy value. Therefore, in this work the isolation of a microorganism with cellulolytic capacity is carried out. A fermentation test of wheat straw with physical pretreatments (grinding), and the combination of a chemical pretreatment —using a saturated solution of Ca(OH)₂— with a physical one, combining three particle sizes for the wheat straw were proposed. The results showed that the combination of particle size (141 µm ~ 250 µm) with the chemical pretreatment  had a positive effect on biological consumption-degradation of 79.5% and a biomass/substrate yield of 0.49 g/g was observed. Both particle size and alkaline treatment had no significant effect on the cellulolytic activity of the obtained extract (p > 0.05).