Robust Pretreatment in Combination with Ultrasound-Assisted Surfactant to Improve the Enzymatic Hydrolysis of Eucalyptus pellita

Abstract

Alkaline pretreatment stands out as a valuable strategy in biomass conversion to overcome the recalcitrance of biomass by removing lignin and a part of hemicellulose. This enhances enzyme accessibility and promotes saccharification. However, increasing the alkaline concentration to enhance the delignification and improve glucose yield together presents inherent limitations. In this experiment the amount of delignification and glucose yield resulting from surfactant associated with sonication during mild alkaline pretreatment of Eucalyptus pellita was investigated. Also, the effect of various factors (sonication temperature and surfactant immersion time) on delignification and glucose yield were examined. The results demonstrated that surfactant associated with sonication pretreatment could overcome the limitation of alkaline pretreatment and could increase the amount of delignification alongside enzymatic hydrolysis glucose yield of Eucalyptus pellita wood by around 90%. The findings indicated that surfactant-assisted with sonication during mild alkaline pretreatment of Eucalyptus pellita (i.e., hardwood) could be recommended as a supporting pretreatment method for the production of monomeric sugars.