Fractionating pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse for increasing the enzymatic digestibility of cellulose

Abstract:

During the bioconversion of lignocellulose to ethanol, the biomass always undergoes pretreatment in order to increase the enzymatic digestibility of cellulose. In present work, we conducted the pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse with aqueous acetic acid for delignification and alkali for deacetylation respectively (Acetoline process) to increase cellulose accessibility for enzymatic hydrolysis. The effects of several factors on the pretreatment effectiveness were investigated. The enzymatic digestibility of pretreated bagasse was further studied. The enzymatic glycan conversion of pretreated solid reached about 80% when it was digested under 7.5% solid consistency with cellulase of 15 FPU/g solid and β-glucosidase of 10 CBU/g solid for 48 h. Compared with dilute acid pretreatment, Acetoline pretreatment could obtain higher enzymatic glycan conversion. The experimental results indicate that Acetoline is an effective pretreatment method to increase the enzymatic digestibility of sugarcane bagasse.