Cynara cardunculus L. as a feedstock for bioethanol production.

LANZA VOLPE, M.; MANCINI, M.; BADARACCO, P.; ALMIRÓN, P.; CRAVERO, V.

La Plata

Simposio; IX International Symposium on Artichoke, Cardoon and their wild relatives; 2015

ISHS

In last decade, different world wide organizations have been focusing their investigations on the use of several crops for their application as renewable sources of energy. Thus, the Kyoto protocol and the Rio +20 Conference among others, have presented as main objective a switch of the actual energetic model to an ?eco-friendly? renewable energy model (production of biofuels). Cynara cardunculus var sylvestris L. (sylvestris cardoon) is an abundant naturally growing perennial herb whereas Cynara cardunculus var. altilis (cultivated cardoon) is a related species cultivated only for human food. Several studies have postulated the use of cardoon biomass as a good candidate for energy production. A promising alternative is obtaining a second generation bioethanol from lignocellulosic material. A total of 12 accessions (six of wild cardoon and six of cultivated cardoon) were evaluated in order to determinate cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin composition. The vegetal material was collected at the maximum vegetative development stage and submitted to a chemical analysis using the Van Soest method. An ANOVA was performed and mean values were compared by Duncan?s test. Potential bioethanol yield per ton of dry matter was calculated using a software belonging to the United States Department of Energy, considering 25 ton/ha of biomass production and 80% of cellulose and hemicellulose hydrolysis as was proposed in previous studies. The mean percentages for each component obtained considering together all the accessions were 32.22% 18.41% and 11.39% for cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, respectively. Nevertheless, significant differences between wild and cultivated cardoons were found (p