Enhancement of enzymatic hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse by the combination of delignification pretreatment and Tween 80

Abstract

Abstract Background Due to the recalcitrant structure of lignocellulosic biomass, pretreatment was required to destroy the intact structure by removing hemicellulose and lignin. In this study, delignification pretreatment with alkali or sodium chlorite of sugarcane bagasse was applied to improve the enzymatic hydrolysis under mild conditions. Results it was found that delignification contributed more in achieving higher glucose yield comparing with the removal of hemicellulose. In addition, the characterization of untreated and pretreated solids was conducted to determine the influence of hemicellulose and lignin degradation on subsequent enzymatic digestibility. Furthermore, Tween 80 was added to reduce the enzyme loading, shorten the hydrolysis time, and enhance the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis, the results indicated that the glucose yield of 92.2% was obtained at enzyme loading of 5 FPU/g substrate. However, the increased yields of glucose with Tween 80 were increased as the enhancement of lignin content and the reduction of enzyme loading, and decreased sharply as the hydrolysis time was prolonged from 6 h to 24 h. Conclusions This study demonstrated that NaClO2 pretreatment presented more in improving enzymatic hydrolysis by delignification. The addition of Tween 80 enabled shortening the hydrolysis time and reducing the enzyme loading. This study provided an economically feasible and mild process for the generation of glucose, which will be subsequently converted to bioethanol and biochemicals.