Bioprocesos para a produción de combustibles, químicos e polímeros a partires de materiais lignocelulósicos

Resumen

In this thesis, a biological process for obtaining value-added products from wheat straw, a plentiful lignocellulosic residue in Spain and Europe, is developed. This task involves the development of a biological pretreatment, based on the use of white-rot fungi to degrade lignin and to reach a lignocellulosic biomass modification similar to that found after applying chemical and physico-chemical pretreatments (Chapters 2 and 3), and an enzymatic hydrolysis step, for the conversion of the polysaccharides of the pretreated straw into their corresponding sugar monomers (Chapter 4). Finally, the conversion of sugar monomers into value-added products is performed by using different pathways: an alcoholic fermentation for bioethanol production (Chapter 5) and a bacterial process in which carbon from sugars is stored inside cells as a degradable biopolymer (polyhydroxybutyrate) beside other high value-added compound (ectoine) (Chapter 6).