Combine pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass with ionic liquid and aqueous ammonia: Better approach for bioethanol production

Abstract

Lignocellulosic biomass is the most suitable and renewable energy resource for bioethanol production which is considered as the most potential bioethanol which can change the dependency on the petroleum energy. The biomass constituents are cellulose, hemicellulose and aromatic polymer lignin. Cellulose is the major constituent and good source of bioethanol production. Despite of huge potential in bioethanol production, high cost of procedure departs its commercial viability impractical, since there are some technical and economic problems associated with the efficient degradation of cellulose. Bioethanol production process require pretreatment, enzymatic treatment and fermentable, where pretreatment and enzymatic treatment require high cost. Pretreatment is a prerequisite technology to facilitate the recovery of fermentable sugar from lignocellulosic biomass. There is various type of pretreatment methods available such as physical, chemical and Physio-chemical. Among them combine pretreatment with aqueous ammonia and ionic liquid pretreatment has gained attention as a potential pretreatment method for the degradation of lignocellulosic biomass. Pretreatment with aqueous ammonia and ionic liquid confers lots of attractive features in contrast to the conventional procedure. These consist of the potential for considerably lower temperature below or at 80 °C, no hazardous chemicals and conditions leading to ease of handling. Additionally, ionic liquid can be recycle and reused after reaction for further cost minimization and can easily serve to increase the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass.