Novel Pretreatment Methods to Improve Enzymatic Saccharification of Sugarcane Bagasse: A Report

Abstract

A lot of recent research in the biomass sector is focusing on how to improve the efficiency of biomass resources. Pretreatment of biomass resources is a novel approach and has gained a lot of attention in the last decade. A review of modern methods and the latest technologies of enhancing the enzymatic saccharification of sugarcane bagasse are presented in this work. This paper looks at the very recent developments in this field. Use of such advanced methods as coupling ionic liquid pretreatment with supercritical fluids and ultrasound irradiation is taking us swiftly towards the ultimate goal which is achieving 100% yield at minimum cost with no adverse environmental effects. However, Optimum process conditions for these methods are yet to be discovered. There is a need to optimize the processes and learn completely about the reaction mechanism in order to shift from lab scale to pilot scale and ultimately to the industrial level. An effort is made to report the latest work and because of it, this paper contains about 95% citations from papers within the last five years. In the end, useful recommendations are given in the conclusion section.

Keywords

• pretreatment methods
• sugarcane bagasse
• enzymatic saccharification
• ionic liquids
• ultrasound irradiation
• microwave irradiation