Enzymatic saccharification of sugar beet pulp for the production of galacturonic acid and arabinose; a study on the impact of the formation of recalcitrant oligosaccharides.

A G M Leijdekkers, J P M Bink, S Geutjes, H A Schols, H Gruppen

Index: Bioresour. Technol. 128 , 518-25, (2013)

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Abstract

Enzymatic saccharification of sugar beet pulp was optimized on kg-scale to release the maximum amounts of monomeric galacturonic acid and arabinose with limited concomitant degradation of cellulose, using conditions that are feasible for industrial upscaling. A selected mixture of pectinases released 79% of the galacturonic acid and 82% of the arabinose as monomers from sugar beet pulp while simultaneously degrading only 17% of the cellulose. The recalcitrant structures that were obtained after hydrolysis were characterized using mass spectrometry. The most abundant structures had an average degree of polymerization of 4-5. They were identified as partially acetylated rhamnogalacturonan-oligosaccharides, mostly containing a terminal galacturonosyl residue on both reducing and non-reducing end, partially methyl esterified/acetylated homogalacturonan-oligosaccharides, mostly containing methyl and acetyl esters at contiguous galacturonosyl residues and arabinan-oligosaccharides, hypothesized to be mainly branched. It could be concluded that especially rhamnogalacturonan-galacturonohydrolase, arabinofuranosidase and pectin acetylesterase are lacking for further degradation of recalcitrant oligosaccharides.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.