Green Energy to Sustainability: Strategies for Global Industries

13Enzymes for Cellulosic Biomass Hydrolysis and Saccharification

Elmar M. Villota^1,3, Ziyu Dai², Yanpin Lu¹, and Bin Yang^*,1

¹Bioproducts, Sciences, and Engineering Laboratory, Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Washington State University, Richland, WA 99354, USA

²Chemical & Biological Process Development Group, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA 99352, USA

³Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Central Luzon State University, Nueva Ecija 3120, Philippines

CHAPTER MENU

• Introduction
• Glycosyl Hydrolases: General Structure and Mechanism
• The Cellulase Enzyme System
• The Hemicellulase Enzyme System
• Microorganisms for Biomass Hydrolysis
• Perspectives
• Acknowledgement
• References

13.1 Introduction

Lignocellulosic biomass is primarily composed of 20–50% cellulose, 15–35% hemicellulose, and 5–30% lignin (Lynd et al. 1991; Yang and Wyman 2007). Due to this complex composition, its hydrolysis necessitates a variety of enzymes, which can be in free or in complexed forms, to attain the complete degradation of its polysaccharides into simple sugars (Yang et al. 2011; Yang and Wyman 2008). These enzymes are typically derived from fungi and bacteria, and have been used in many industries such as the food industry and the emerging and highly anticipated industry of second‐generation bioethanol. The appeal of the enzymatic processing of pretreated biomass in the second‐generation biofuel production lies in its relatively lower energy and chemical ...