Feng Chen

Biofuel production through cellulosic process is one of the most promising technologies to replace fossil fuel and support bioeconomy development. Bioconversion of lignocellulosic feedstocks to advanced biofuels such as ethanol is based on a sugar platform process, in which hemicelluloses and cellulose are converted to monosaccharide sugars for further processing, for instance through a microbial fermentation process. Efficient bioconversion is however hampered by the recalcitrance of the feedstock, which to a large extent can be explained by the negative effect of lignin on convertibility. Thus, the pretreatment for delignification is a prerequisite to overcome recalcitrance and allow enzyme accessibility to cellulose and maximize product recovery for improved economics of second-generation lignocellulosic bio-refineries. Today, thermal chemical pretreatments (heat + acid or heat + alkali) are dominant methods and well used in Swedish biorefineries, however they end up in high economic cost in addition to environmental consequences

This project will suggest using cultivation of edible mushroom as a biological pre-process for delignification and improving enzymatic saccharification, by which the costs for thermal chemical pretreatment will be saved and considerable profits shall be achieved from harvesting protein-rich and nutritional edible mushrooms. The approach is “combined edible mushroom and biofuel production”, that is to use forest residues or by-products as growing substrates for edible mushroom production and to recycle spent mushroom substrates (SMS) as feedstock for producing advanced biofuel through sugar platform