The combined effect of inorganic salt and ionic liquid in pretreatment on enzymatic saccharification of rice straw

¹ Biorefinery and Process Automation Engineering Center, Department of Chemical and Process Engineering, TGGS, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, 10800 Bangkok, Thailand
² School of Biotechnology, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra, J&K-182320, India
³ Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India

^* Corresponding author: tawiwan.k@tggs.kmutnb.ac.th

Abstract

The pretreatment method is one of the challenging steps in the production of biofuel through the biorefinery process that unlocks the recalcitrant nature of lignocellulosic biomass. Ionic liquid pretreatment gained attention for being highly effective to improve the enzymatic saccharification of the biomass, however its high cost hinders its industrial application. In this study, the combined effect of ionic liquid 1- ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EMIM-Ac) with inorganic salts (NaCl and KCl) was used for the pretreatment of rice straw. Optimization of pretreatment was conducted based on Response Surface Methodology and sugar yields obtained by EMIM-Ac+NaCl (160 °C, 88.7 min, 7.6%wt) and EMIMAc+ KCl (160 °C, 68.2 min, 12.5%wt) were 670.7 and 392.9 mg/g-biomass, respectively. The effect of combined pretreatment on ethanol production was analyzed after 48h fermentation. The results showed that the ethanol yield from pretreated samples with EMIM-Ac+NaCl (0.72%) and EMIM+KCl (0.76%) was increased by 2.18 and 2.25 fold times, respectively, compared to untreated sample (0.33%). This combined effect of inorganic salts and ionic liquid significantly removed the lignin during pretreatment, while maintaining efficient enzymatic saccharification of rice straw. Thus, this cost-effective combined chemical method may be an alternative strategy for increasing cellulosic ethanol production.