PhD defence by Fa Zhou
On Monday 15 March Fa Zhou will defend his PhD thesis "Valorization of Green Biomass: Alfalfa Pulp as a Potential Platform for Food and Biochemicals"
Principal supervisor
- Professor Peter Ruhdal Jensen
Co-supervisor
- Associate Professor Timothy John Hobley
Examiners
- Senior Assistant Professor Csaba Fehér, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
- Associate Professor Nina Gringer, DTU National Food Institute
- Professor Peter Ulvskov, University of Copenhagen
Chairperson at defence
- Associate Professor Christian Solem
Resume
The biorefining industry generates a substantial quantity of lignocellulosic biomass waste, representing a sustainable and renewable bioresource. Innovative approaches are essential for efficiently transforming these materials into valuable products, often requiring pretreatment due to their structural and the inherent challenges presented by plant cell walls. The objective of this study was to conduct a treatment of alfalfa pulp using oyster mushrooms for the purpose of producing edible food. Additionally, the potential of utilizing the pulp for the development of a sugar platform in the fermentation industry was investigated.
In mushroom cultivation, alfalfa pulp offers several advantages, including the no need for nutrition added, a shorter cultivation days, and high fruiting yield compared the commercial substrate. These characteristics make it a promising substitute for conventional substrates like wheat straw or wood. Moreover, through the nutrition and safety analysis, the produced edible mushrooms from alfalfa pulp show an acceptable trace metals contents ranges, as well as excellent properties in protein content and essential amino acids profile.
In addition, the alfalfa pulp has the potential to produce a suitable sugar platform for fermentation. Pretreating alfalfa pulp effectively removed the impurities while preserving the majority of useful structure. The saccharification process could convert glucose and xylose from cellulose and hemicellulose in pretreated alfalfa pulp. The combination of the waste brown juice and the sugar extractives could serve as potential media for biochemical fermentation.