Page 333 - Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts

Pretreatment of agroindustry 14

waste by ozonolysis for synthesis
of biorefinery products

Nurul Suhada Ab Rasid, Muzakkir Mohammad Zainol and Nor Aishah
Saidina Amin
Chemical Reaction Engineering Group (CREG), School of Chemical and Energy
Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

14.1 Introduction

Biomass as a renewable energy source is gaining attention since it can be used as
the source of fuel and energy, while being sustainable, abundantly available, and
cheap. Lignocellulosic biomass includes materials from trees, grasses, stems, and
flowers where some of them are considered agroindustry waste such as residue
from sawmills, wastes from agriculture such as corncob, wheat straw, sugarcane
bagasse, potato haulms, oil palm waste, and residue from sunflowers and rapeseed
oil pressing (Kucharska et al., 2018). These agriculture residues produce around 5
million MT of biomass annually (Bharathiraja et al., 2017), which are rich in cellu-
lose, hemicellulose, lignin, and other nutrients such as proteins, lipids, phenolic
compounds, and pectin. These compounds have a huge potential to be utilized for
various industries such as pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic industries and could act
as a source of renewable energy, thus converting waste into wealth (Kucharska
et al., 2018). However, the utilization of biomass as a source of bio-based chemical
production has yet to be established since it requires pretreatment steps to break
and open the lignocellulosic biomass structure into more fibrous components
(Fig. 14.1).
The pretreatment method for degrading lignocellulosic biomass can be divided
into physical, chemical, and mechanical pretreatment. Physical treatment consists
of ultrasonic, extrusion, and microwave, while chemical pretreatment includes ozo-
nolysis, ionic liquid methods, acid methods, alkaline methods, and organic solvents,
while the mechanical pretreatment involves hammer milling, ball milling, and
grinding process. Waste lignocellulose has huge potential to be a promising mate-
rial for the production of second-generation biofuels, including biohydrogen,
bioethanol, methane (Chandra et al., 2012), and biodiesel (Bohutskyi et al., 2014).
Ozonolysis, the process in which a material is treated with ozone to compromise
its chemical structure, is the most promising pretreatment method for the delignifi-
cation of lignocellulosic biomass since it can degrade up to 85% of lignin compo-
nent in the biomass (Wan Omar and Amin, 2016). The ozone acts as a strong
Refining Biomass Residues for Sustainable Energy and Bioproducts. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-818996-2.00014-4
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