Effect of LHW, HCl, and NaOH pretreatment on enzymatic hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse: sugar recovery and fractal-like kinetics

Conversion of lignocellulose to sugars involves two main processes, namely pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis. Lignocellulose pretreatment leads to the degradation of enzymatic recalcitrance of substrate for achieving efficient saccharification. In this study, liquid hot water (LHW), hydrochloric acid (HCl), and sodium hydroxide (NaOH) were as reagents used to pretreat sugarcane bagasse (SB). Results showed that LHW, HCl, and NaOH pretreatment could solubilize 95.3%, 94.7% xylan and 88.7% lignin, respectively. Enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated SB showed that the maximum glucose (26.0g/L) and xylose (12.7g/L) concentration were produced by NaOH pretreatment, and slightly more glucose and less xylose were produced after HCl pretreatment compared to LHW pretreatment. Addition of Tween 80 or xylanase could significantly improve both glucose and xylose production. At 48h, the glucose increase for LHW, HC1 and NaOH pretreatment was 38.3%, 26.4% and 8.0%, respectively, and the xylose increase for them was 35.0%, 24.9% and 1.7%, respectively. Fractal-like kinetics showed that the value of rate constant increased after the addition of Tween 80 or xylanase, and the efficiency of enzymatic hydrolysis mainly depended on rate constant other than fractal dimension of substrate. Totally, substrate accessibility was dominated for efficient of lignocellulose to sugar compared to enzyme loading. The application of fractal-like theory on the heterogeneous enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose was quite successful.