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Subcritical water (SCW) treatment has gained enormous attention as an environmentally friendly technique for organic matter and an attractive reaction medium for a variety of applications. In the current work the process parameters were optimized by RSM model.

Conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into monomeric carbohydrates is economically beneficial and suitable for sustainable production of biofuels. Hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass using high acid concentration results in decomposition of sugars into fermentative inhibitors. Thus, the main aim of this work was to investigate the optimum hydrolysis conditions for sorghum brown midrib IS11861 biomass to maximize the pentose sugars yield with minimized levels of fermentative inhibitors at low acid concentrations. Process parameters investigated include sulfuric acid concentration (0.2-1 M), reaction time (30-120 min) and temperature (80-121°C). At the optimum condition (0.2 M sulfuric acid, 121°C and 120 min), 97.6% of hemicellulose was converted into xylobiose (18.02 mg/g), xylose (225.2 mg/g), arabinose (20.2 mg/g) with low concentration of furfural (4.6 mg/g). Furthermore, the process parameters were statistically optimized using response surface methodology based on central composite design. Due to the presence of low concentration of fermentative inhibitors, 78.6 and 82.8% of theoretical ethanol yield were attained during the fermentation of non-detoxified and detoxified hydrolyzates, respectively, using Pichia stipitis 3498 wild strain, in a techno-economical way.

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The present work investigates the efficiency of two pretreatment pathways of biomass, namely ionic liquid (IL) and dilute sulfuric acid (H2SO4) hydrolysis. Both processes are compared in terms of their composition and enzymatic saccharification efficacy. For the IL process, bamboo was dissolved in 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([Emim]­[OAc]) at different temperatures (90, 110, 130, and 150 °C) for 3 h. These pretreated bamboo samples were then characterized by thermogravimetric analysis and X-ray diffraction to evaluate the biomass crystallinity and thermal decomposition temperature. The crystallinity index, thermal decomposition temperature, hemicellulose, and lignin content of bamboo were found to decrease after [Emim]­[OAc] pretreatment. Further, the IL pretreated biomass significantly enhanced the enzymatic saccharification of cellulose component of bamboo. The enzymatic hydrolysis rate for IL pretreated biomass was 4.7 times higher than that of the acid pretreated biomass. This was primarily attributed to the difference in the crystallinity and delignification in the IL process. To improve the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of bamboo, a combined pretreatment (dilute acid + ionic liquid) process was also employed and compared with IL pretreated cellulose and bamboo samples. The consequences of this investigation revealed that IL pretreatment may offer novel favorable circumstances compared to a dilute acid pretreatment process for bamboo which can deliver high sugar yields with IL pretreatment.

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This work was aimed at investigating the effect of process parameters on dilute acid pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of spent citronella biomass (after citronella oil extraction) and sugarcane bagasse on total reducing sugar (TRS) yield. In acid pretreatment, the parameters studied were acid concentration, temperature, and time. At the optimized condition (0.1 M H2SO4, 120°C, and 120 min), maximum TRS obtained was 452.27 mg·g−1and 487.50 mg·g−1for bagasse and citronella, respectively. Enzymatic hydrolysis of the pretreated biomass usingTrichoderma reesei26291 showed maximum TRS yield of 226.99 mg·g−1for citronella and 282.85 mg·g−1for bagasse at 10 FPU, 50°C, and 48 hr. The maximum crystallinity index (CI) of bagasse and citronella after acid pretreatment obtained from X-ray diffraction analysis was 64.41% and 56.18%, respectively. Decreased CI after enzymatic hydrolysis process to 37.28% and 34.16% for bagasse and citronella, respectively, revealed effective conversion of crystalline cellulose to glucose. SEM analysis of the untreated and treated biomass revealed significant hydrolysis of holocellulose and disruption of lignin.

A wide range of inorganic and organic chemicals are used during the pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass to produce biofuels. Developing an industrially relevant 2G biorefinery process using such chemicals is challenging and requires more unit operations for downstream processing. A sustainable process has been developed to achieve industrially relevant titers of bioethanol with significant ethanol yield. The pretreatment of sorghum biomass was performed by a continuous pilot-scale hydrothermal reactor followed by disk milling. Enzymatic hydrolysis was performed without washing the pretreated biomass. Moreover, citrate buffer strength was reduced to 100-fold (50 mM to 0.5 mM) during the enzymatic hydrolysis. Enzymatic hydrolysis at 0.5 mM citrate buffer strength showed that significant sugar concentrations of 222 ± 2.3 to 241 ± 2.3 g/L (glucose + xylose) were attained at higher solids loadings of 50 to 60% (w/v). Furthermore, hydrolysates were fermented to produce bioethanol using two different xylose-fermenting Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains and a co-culture of xylose-fermenting and non-GMO yeast cultures. Bioethanol titer of 81.7 g/L was achieved with an ethanol yield of 0.48 gp/gs. Additionally, lipids were produced using the oleaginous yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides, yielding 13.2 g/L lipids with cellular lipid accumulation of 38.5% w/w from 100 g/L of sugar concentration. In summary, reducing the strength of the citrate buffer during enzymatic hydrolysis and omitting inorganic chemicals from the pretreatment process enhances the fermentability of hydrolysates and can also reduce operating costs.