Enhanced bioethanol production from sugarcane bagasse: combination of liquid hot water and deep eutectic solvent pretreatment for optimized enzymatic saccharification

Abstract

In the present study, a sustainable pretreatment methodology combining liquid hot water and deep eutectic solvent is proposed for the efficient fractionation of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin from sugarcane bagasse, thereby facilitating the comprehensive utilization of both C5 and C6 sugars. The application of this combined pretreatment strategy to sugarcane bagasse led to notable enhancements in enzymatic saccharification and subsequent fermentation. Experiment results demonstrate that liquid hot water-deep eutectic solvent pretreatment yielded 85.05 ± 0.66 g·L^–1 of total fermentable sugar (glucose: 60.96 ± 0.21 g·L^–1, xylose: 24.09 ± 0.87 g·L^–1) through enzymatic saccharification of sugarcane bagasse. Furthermore, fermentation of the pretreated sugarcane bagasse hydrolysate yielded 34.33 ± 3.15 g·L^–1 of bioethanol. These findings confirm the effectiveness of liquid hot water-deep eutectic solvent pretreatment in separating lignocellulosic components, thus presenting a sustainable and promising pretreatment method for maximizing the valuable utilization of biomass resources.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

sugar cane bagasse / synergistic pretreatment / enzymatic saccharification / ethanol

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China for financial support of this research (Grant Nos. 21978053, 51508547).

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-024-2438-9 and is accessible for authorized users.

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