NANOCEL - development of enzyme mixtures for the preparation of nanocelluloses by a biohibrid process

Abstract

Nanocellulose is a new class of renewable nanomaterial that can lead to several benefits in areas such as biomedical, automotive, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and electronics. The traditional production processes involves severe chemical or mechanical treatment steps, which have several technical, economic and environmental limitations. The recent proposal to add or replace one of these steps by an enzymatic treatment is an innovative and promising alternative, but still with very limited efficiency since the enzyme preparations typically used are developed and optimized for use in other industrial sectors (i.e. food, textile, pulp and paper). Therefore, to increase the efficiency of the enzymatic treatment, auxiliary pre-treatment steps are necessary for production of cellulose nanofibrillated (CNF), and a high amount of enzyme is necessary in the production of cellulose nanocrystalline (CNC), which all results in high cost. In this project it is proposed to identify essential enzymes and proteins and their properties more suitable for application in the production of nanocelluloses and using these enzymes and proteins to develop and optimize specific enzymatic preparations with high efficiency to be used in the production of CNC and CNF in a sustainably and more technoeconomically feasible manner. The identification of these biochemical agents and their properties will be obtained through the elucidation of the mode of action and interaction of various biochemical systems (hydrolytic, oxidative, amorphogenesis-inducing) in the production of CNC and CNF. A novel adsorption-based enzymatic reaction system will be developed to enable the production of nanocellulose in a Biorefinery concept. The development of enzymatic preparations and adsorptive enzymatic reaction process will also allow assessing the techno-economic feasibility of integrating the production of nanocelluloses (as a high value co-product) with the cellulosic ethanol production process in a Biorefinery concept. (AU)