Cellulose hydrolysis has been found to be significantly retarded, particularly at high severity acid treatment conditions, principally due to the formation of pseudo-lignin. In order to suppress its formation during hydrothermal and/or acid pretreatment, a strategy assisted with a green solvent i-e biodiesel employing with different acids has been evaluated in this work. The qualitative analyses revealed that indeed biodiesel was effective enough to considerably suppress the pseudo lignin formation by way of dissolving out the furfural formed during high severity acid pretreatment conditions. This was attributed to the characteristics of biodiesel which it has to solubilize the expected fractions of furfural formed during typical acid pretreatment and contributing thus to minimize the pseudo lignin formation. Following pretreatment, the samples were subjected to SEM images to study the surface morphology in order to visually verify the evidence of suppression in pseudo lignin formation. Furthermore, XPS, XRD and FTIR analyses were also carried out to confirm the structural changes during this pretreatment. All of these conclusively suggest that undoubtedly biodiesel is an effective green approach to help improve the acid pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass.

Biodiesel as a green solvent to improve the dilute acid pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass

256th National Meeting (2018)

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