Bioethanol production from rice straw by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation with statistical optimized cellulase cocktail and fermenting fungus

Abstract Background Rice straw is one of the abundant lignocellulosic biomass with potential as a feedstock for bioethanol production. To produce ethanol from the biomass biologically, enzymatic hydrolysis is necessary that can effectively degrade rice straw into fermentable sugars such as glucose and xylose. Many researches utilized many kinds of commercial cellulase reagents on the hydrolysis of cellulose. Since these have different enzyme activities, enzyme reagents suitable for each biomass must be selected. In this study, three appropriate cellulase reagents were selected by multivariate analysis technique and then optimized by design of experiments method for efficient hydrolysis of alkali-pretreated rice straw. Moreover, an ethanol production from the treated straw was performed by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with the optimized enzyme cocktail and xylose-fermenting fungus of Mucor circinelloides. Results Pretreatment by alkali solution of rice straw resulted in the increase of fermentable sugar content from 56.3 to 80.0%. The desirable commercial enzyme reagents for saccharification of the straw were determined as a combination of “Cellulase Onozuka 3S”, “Cellulase T Amano 4”, and “Pectinase G Amano” by a multivariate analysis based on various cellulolytic activities of each reagent. The optimum mixing ratio was calculated by response surface method based on design of experiment method. The optimized cocktail successfully achieved 75.3 g/L in production of the total fermentable sugar by hydrolysis of alkali-treated rice straw that agreed with the hydrolysis efficiency of 94.1%. SSF of 100 g/L treated rice straw with the optimal cocktail and M. circinelloides under aerobic condition resulted in 30.5 g/L ethanol concentration for 36 h. Conclusion The construction of cellulase cocktail by the proposed statistical method enabled efficient hydrolysis of alkali-treated rice straw. SSF process combining the optimized cocktail and a xylose-fermenting fungus could be expected as a promising system for ethanol production from various lignocellulosic biomasses.