Enhancement of Total Reducing Sugar Content from Seaweeds (sws) Biomass Via Pretreatment for Ethanol Production: an Optimized Study

High carbohydrate content of seaweeds (SWs) biomass makes them a potential feedstock for bioethanol production. Improvement of the conversion efficiency from polysaccharide to fermentable sugar during the pretreatment process is helpful to enhance the bioethanol yield. In this study, the response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the thermal-acid pretreatment of SWs (S. thunbergii GEEL-15 and Ulva sp. GEEL-17). Biomass loading, acid concentration, and pretreatment time were studied as independent variables and total reducing sugar (TRS) content was selected as response value. The results showed that the correlation between independent variables with TRS content was significant (p<0.001). The optimal biomass loading for GEEL-15 and GEEL-17 was 9.0