COMPARISON OF CELL WALL STRUCTURE OF DIFFERENT WESTERN BALKAN PLANT SPECIES AS A SOURCE FOR BIOFUELS

Abstract

Understanding of composition and connections between the building macromolecules of plant biomass, such as cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, is main key for their better utilization in biofuels industry. We compared four different plant species which are abundant in the region of the Western Balkans. We investigated the structure of the cell walls, as the main constituent of plant biomass, isolated from branches of softwood (Picea omorika (Pancic) Purkine), hardwood (Acer platanoides L.), maize stem (Zea mays L.) as examples of crop species, and Paulownia tomentosa tree as a fast-growing species with a huge biomass yield. For our investigation, we combined Fluorescence-detected linear dichroism (FDLD) method and X-ray Diffraction. We obtained data for anisotropy and crystallography which are a base for prediction of the best and appropriate plant species for easy deconstruction of its biomass. Our results show that Acer branch as a hardwood shows the highest anisotropy and the lowest crystallinity compared to the other species while Picea Omorika needles show opposite results as the lowest anisotropy and the higher crystallinity. The results for maize show that the stems are easier for utilization than leaves. The isolated cell walls from leaves of Paulownia tomentosa show similar results and good correlation between anisotropy and crystallinity, thus we can conclude that this plant is easy to use in biofuel industries.