Abstract
Most of the agricultural wastes in developing countries are disposed of by on-site combustion leading to unmanaged environmental pollutions. Conversion of agricultural wastes to value-added products, such as bioethanol and biogas, is a promising method to reduce agro-waste after harvesting seasons. In this study, Citrus maxima peels (Pomelo peels) was selected to be converted to reducing sugars, which could be a raw material to produce other value-added products. To promote enzymatic hydrolysis reactions, pomelo peels were pretreated with sodium hydroxide by variations of three pretreatment parameters, including temperature (50-100 ºC), time (0.5-6 h), and concentration of NaOH (0.5-3.0 M). Box-Behnken design (BBD) was applied in Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to determine the optimized pretreatment condition and to find the relationship between pretreatment factors and reducing sugar yields. The predicted optimal pretreatment condition was determined to be at 94.28 ºC, 4.5h, 2.17M with reducing sugar yield of 98.9 mg/g of dried pomelo peels. The results clearly showed that reducing sugar yields obtained from pretreated pomelo peels were 1.87 folds higher than untreated biomass (52.81 mg/g of pomelo peels). Therefore, this study demonstrated the potential of pomelo peels to be used as an alternative raw material for value-added products rather than being a landfill or causal agent of pollution.
Highlights
Energy consumption has increased in the past decade across the globe
Alkaline pretreatment of Pomelo peels An alkaline pretreatment of pomelo peels was carried out to understand the range of pretreatment factors to be used in the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) study for optimization of pretreatment conditions based on the sugar yield
The optimization of pretreatment conditions was carried out using the RSM model
Summary
An increase in population rate along with industrial development has led to more energy consumption than in the past years. Energy production using non-renewable sources is insufficient to meet the rising energy demand. This has led to an increase in the research on renewable energy produced from hydropower, solar energy, wind power, and biomass. According to the data in 2013, Thailand produced 62 million tons of biomass per year, which had the potential to generate 13,348 thousand tons of crude oil [1]. Residual biomass could be used to generate renewable energy for local use. This provides health benefits for people and reduces environmental pollution [2]
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