Abstract
Biofuels are essentials as they can provide impending substitute for fossil fuels. Rice straw has gained much
attention from researchers because of its usability as a potential feedstock for bioethanol production. Pre-treatments are
crucial for enzymatic hydrolysis of rice straw. In this study, combination of microwave and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is
employed for the delignification of rice straw. The Response surface methodology is used to optimize the pretreatment
conditions with respect to H2O2 concentration, microwave power and irradiation time. Under optimum conditions, maximum
reducing sugar obtained through microwave assisted H2O2 is 1,453.64 μg/mL. The chemical and morphological analysis
ascertained that the surface of the samples treated with microwave assisted H2O2 was more ruptured and has a significantly high
crystalline index (63.64%) than untreated rice straw sample (52.2%). Microwave assisted H2O2 pre-treatmentdisrupted the
silicon waxy structure and broken down allether linkages between lignin and carbohydrates and thus, efficiently remove lignin.
The present study proves that microwave assisted H2O2 is an effective pretreatment technique for the conversion of rice straw
into bioethanol production by enhancing enzymatic saccharification
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 173-181 |
| Journal | Agricultural Engineering International: CIGR Journal |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - Mar 2014 |
Bibliographical note
The full text published PDF of this article is available on the CIGR website at: http://cigrjournal.org/index.php/Ejounral/article/view/2633. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.Keywords
- pre-treatment
- enzymatic hydrolysis
- rice straw
- biofuel
- microwave
- hydrogen peroxide