Enzymatic hydrolysis at high dry matter content: The influence of the substrates’ physical properties and of loading strategies on mixing and energetic consumption

The present work investigates the impact of the physical properties and loading strategies of wheat straw and miscanthus on enzymatic hydrolysis at high DM concentration. Three parameters have been chosen to evaluate the enzymatic hydrolysis performance: (i) the mixing time, (ii) the energetic mixing consumption and (iii) the glucose concentration. It was demonstrated that the hydrolysis of miscanthus is easy to perform and has low viscosity. On the contrary, the higher porosity grade of wheat straw than miscanthus (73% against 52%) contributed to have a very high viscosity at 20% w/w DM. The development of a fed-batch strategy allowed the reduction of viscosity inducing the energetic consumption lowering from 30 kJ to 10 kJ. It has been also proven that the miscanthus addition in wheat straw achieved to decrease mixing energy consumption at 5–8 kJ, when it represented more than 30% of the total mass of the reaction medium.