Tanga M., Russo M.E., Marra L., Marzocchella A., Salatino P., 2026, Set up of Lab-Scale Packed Bed of Lignocellulosic Biomass for Cellulase Adsorption Characterization, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 124, 55-60.
Enzymatic hydrolysis (EH) of lignocellulosic biomass (LB) is a central step in biorefinery saccharification, yet its large-scale implementation remains limited by unproductive enzyme adsorption on lignin and mass transfer constraints within biomass particles, both of which reduce sugar yields. The dosage of cellulases is crucial to achieve high conversion of polysaccharides and the amount of enzymes to the biomass is strongly affected by adsorption of enzymes on the biomass particles. In this study, a lab-scale packed-bed reactor was developed to investigate cellulases adsorption under continuous-flow conditions, to support the selection of enzyme dosage and in EH processes. The system enables the evaluation of enzyme partitioning between solid and liquid phases avoiding the limitations posed by mixing in stirred reactors at high-solids content. First, bovine serum albumin (BSA) was employed as an inert protein to set-up the apparatus and calibrate the on-line UV absorbance measurements. Then, the commercial cellulase cocktail Cellic® CTec2 was used as an industrially relevant biocatalyst to perform continuous adsorption tests with Cynara cardunculus and Arundo donax as reference biomass substrates. Breakthrough profiles and final protein partitioning showed an increase in adsorption capacity compared to data from batch adsorption tests in high-solids mixed systems. The study provides quantitative data for the design of heterogeneous biocatalytic processes relevant in the field of sugar-based biorefinery and opens opportunities to the study of multicomponent enzyme solutions on complex solid substrates.
