Acid pretreatment of bagasse pith at low temperature with steam-assisted heating

Abstract

In this paper, dilute acid pretreatment of bagasse pith was investigated at low temperature. Process parameters varied including mass ratio of liquid to solid (r = 6:1–12:1 l/kg), reaction temperature (T = 100 °C–130 °C), and acid concentration (c = 0.75 wt. %–1.5 wt. %) in order to effectively transform hemicellulose to fermentable sugar to improve the utilization of bagasse pith. The effects of dilute acid pretreatment were evaluated by fermentable sugar yield and decomposition products concentration. The optimum pretreatment conditions for depolymerization of hemicellulose bagasse pith was obtained at r = 10:1 l/kg, T = 120 °C, c = 1.0 wt. %, t = 16 min. From this paper, it could be concluded that dilute acid pretreatment can be successfully applied to bagasse pith to achieve high yield of xylose (84.41%) with acceptable levels of fermentation inhibitors formation.