Saccharification of sugarcane bagasse by magnetic carbon-based solid acid pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis

Abstract

Saccharification of sugarcane bagasse is one of the most important process for its conversion to high value biofuels and chemicals. In the present work, a sustainable hydrolysis method combined with catalytic pretreatment by magnetic carbon-based solid acid and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis were applied for the enhanced reducing sugar (xylose and glucose) production from sugarcane bagasse. The pretreatment condition was optimized via response surface methodology with Box-Behnken design. Under optimized conditions (the ratio of sugarcane bagasse, catalyst and water is 1:1:25 (g:g:mL), 170 °C for 10 min), the highest xylose yield of 91.62 % was achieved for 10 min. The enzymatic digestibility of the pretreated sugarcane bagasse under the optimum condition was reached up to 94.26 % at 72 h under the enzyme loading of 20 FPU/g, which is much higher than that of natural sugarcane bagasse. Meanwhile, FTIR, XRD and SEM were used to characterize the effects of the pretreatment process. Overall, this study provides a greener and high-efficiency method for saccharifying sugarcane bagasse to produce reducing sugars.