Increasing Sugarcane Straw Pre-treatment Efficiency Using Ionic Liquid Mixtures at Low Temperature

Ionic Liquids (ILs) have great potential for pre-treatment of lignicellulosic biomass; however, for scaling up purposes, cheaper IL alternatives, such as protic ionic liquids, and process set up must be addressed. In the present work, cheap and easy synthesizable ethanolammonium-based ILs were used in a systematically assessment of the impact of temperature, water addition, solid loading, ultrasound, agitation and IL mixture content on sugarcane straw (SW) pre-treatment, regarding enzymatic digestibility and delignification. Operational conditions were assessed and screened in a bench scale reactor. The efficiencies of cellulose enzymatic hydrolysis post pre-treatment ranged from 17 % up to 100 %, depending on the process set up. Similarly to hydrolysis efficiency, delignification ranged from 2 % up to 57 %, depending on test conditions.