This work evaluates the ability of an ionic liquid‐methanol cosolvent system to extract lipids and recycle fermentable sugars recovered from oil‐bearing Rhodosporidium toruloides grown in batch culture on defined media using glucose and xylose as carbon sources. Growth on the recycled mixed carbon substrate was successful with glucose consumed before xylose and overall cell mass to lipid yields (YP/X) between 57% and 61% (w/w relative to whole dried cell mass) achieved. Enzymatic hydrolysis of the delipified carbohydrate fraction recovered approximately 9%–11% (w/w) of the whole dried cell mass as fermentable sugars, which were successfully recycled as carbon sources without further purification. In total, up to 70% (w/w) of the whole dried cell mass was recovered as lipids and fermentable sugars and the substrate to lipid yields (YP/S) was increased from 0.12 to 0.16 g lipid/g carbohydrate consumed, highlighting the promise of this approach to process lipid bearing cell biomass. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 30:1239–1242, 2014

This work evaluates the applicability of an ionic liquid-methanol co-solvent system to extract phorbol esters from jatropha biomass. The extracted phorbol esters readily solubilized into the co-solvent due to a shared amphiphilic nature. Methyl sulfate anion had superior performance relative to acetate anion, extracting and solubilizing higher quantities of phorbol esters. Compared to traditional methods which only extract phorbol esters, the co-solvent system simultaneously extracted and separated the bio-oil to its own separate immiscible phase and with no appreciable loss of protein - the majority of protein remaining with the biomass and only a small residual amount (similar to 1 mg/ml) solubilizing into the co-solvent. The optimum co-solvent concentration for simultaneous extraction of phorbol esters and bio-oil was determined to be 30 wt% IL and 70 wt% methanol. With respect to the extracted kernel biomass, the high proportion of protein (68-70%) and low phorbol esters (0.15 mg/g kernel) content suggested a high suitability as an animal feed. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The applicability of ionic liquid-methanol cosolvent system to both extract bio-oil and simultaneously pretreat the carbohydrate fraction of jatropha and safflower biomass for enzymatic hydrolysis to fermentable sugars is presented. Although pretreatment with either the cosolvent or pure ionic liquid yielded comparable hydrolysis kinetics and fermentable sugar yields on safflower whole seeds, the addition of alcohol to the ionic liquid was necessary to optimally recover both bio-oil and fermentable sugars. The ionic liquid [C2mim][Ac] was far more effective than [C2mim][MeSO4] with optimum processing conditions occurring at a cosolvent concentration of 70–30 wt% of [C2mim][Ac] to methanol and a processing temperature of 120°C. Under these conditions, the majority of the bio-oil was extracted and 25.4 wt% (safflower) and 14.3 wt% (jatropha) of the whole seed biomass were recovered as fermentable sugars. The recovery of fermentable sugars from the carbohydrate fraction was as high as 74% and 78% for jatropha and safflower seeds, respectively, when using [C2mim][Ac] cosolvent. A preliminary theoretical analysis of two potential oil seed processing pathways using the cosolvent system suggested that the corecovery of bio-oil, fermentable sugars, and a protein rich meal can recover a majority of the energy contained in the original biomass—a result that improves upon the traditional approach of solely extracting bio-oil.

L'invention concerne un procede de conversion de lignocellulose en sucre, comprenant des ameliorations du rendement et du debit de production de sucre developpe en utilisant un pretraitement de liquide ionique. Cette nouvelle strategie de pretraitement ameliore sensiblement l'efficacite (en termes de rendement et de vitesse de reaction) de la saccarification de la biomasse lignocellulosique. La cellulose et l'hemicellulose, quand elles sont hydrolysees en leurs sucres, peuvent etre converties en carburant ethanol grâce a des technologies de fermentation bien etablies. Ces sucres forment egalement les matieres premieres pour la production d'une grande variete de produits chimiques et de polymeres. La structure complexe de la biomasse requiere un pretraitement approprie pour permettre une saccharification efficace des composants de cellulose et d'hemicellulose en leurs sucres constitutifs. Les approches de pretraitement actuelles souffrent de vitesses de reaction lentes d'hydrolyse de cellulose (en utilisant l'enzyme cellulase), et de rendements faibles.

The ability of plants to metabolize the xenobiotic nitrate ester, glycerol trinitrate (GTN, nitroglycerin), was examined using cultured plant cells and plant cell extracts. Intact cells rapidly degrade GTN with the initial formation of glycerol dinitrate (GDN) and the later formation of glycerol mononitrate (GMN). A material balance analysis of these intermediates indicates little, if any, formation of reduced, conjugated or cell-bound carbonaceous metabolites. Cell extracts were shown to be capable of degrading GTN with the simultaneous formation of GDN in stoichiometric amounts. The intermediates observed, and the timing of their appearance, are consistent with a sequential denitration pathway that has been reported for the microbial degradation of nitrate esters. The degradative activities of plant cells are only tenfold less than those reported for bacterial GTN degradation. These results suggest that plants may serve a direct degradative function for the phytoremediation of sites contaminated by organic nitrate esters.