Investigation of Relationship Between Sugar Yield and Particle Size in Biofuel Manufacturing

Biofuel manufacturing consists of two major processes, i.e., feedstock preprocessing and bioconversion. The preprocessing includes size reduction and pelleting. The bioconversion includes pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation. Various studies have been implemented for these two processes. Most existing literature focuses on a specific process, while very few of them consider the possible interactions between the two processes. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between the particle size in feedstock preprocessing and the sugar yield (proportional to biofuel yield) in bioconversion. The method of design of experiments was used to design experiments and analyze the experimental results of sugar yield with different particle sizes for three different types of biomass. Critical parameters that significantly influence the sugar yield were identified. The optimal configurations of the particle size were recommended.