Hydrolysis of Primary Clarified Sludge with Addition of an Nonionic Surfactant to Increase the Yield

Background:

A significant fraction of short fibers commonly called “reject fines” is produced while recycling waste paper at paper mills. These fines are usually rejected into the solid waste stream that further requires land filling at cost to the manufacturer and poses environmental problems. The major component of these rejects is cellulose that can be a potential source of fermentable sugars for biofuels, bioplastics or other products.

Technology Overview:

Technology developed at SUNY ESF allows the digestion of the cellulosic portions of the rejects by enzymatic hydrolysis to produce sugars in their monomeric forms. The resulting sugar solutions can be fermented into biofuels such as ethanol and butanol, or processed into biomaterials such as polyhydroxy-alkanoates, producing value for the waste products while simultaneously mitigating their adverse environmental impact by avoiding solid waste.

 Advantages: 

• Selectively purifies full-length, non-degraded target proteins.
• Simple purification using Ni-NTA columns.
• Design protects target protein from degradation by cellular proteases.
• Peptides can be purified out of inclusion bodies.
• Can be easily integrated into other vectors.

 Applications: 

• Production of sugars from waste cellulose
• Biofuel/bioethanol production
• Pulp and paper production
• Biocomposites