title: Surfactant-assisted acid pretreatment of sugarcane tops for bioethanol production.
abstract: Sugarcane tops is one of the largest biomass resources in India and in tropical countries such as Brazil in terms of surplus availability. Conversion of this feedstock to ethanol requires pretreatment to make it more accessible for the enzymes used in saccharification. Though several pretreatment regimens have been developed for addressing biomass recalcitrance, very few seem to be promising as an industrial process. A novel hybrid method involving use of mild acid and surfactant was developed which could effectively remove lignin and improve the sugar yield from sugar cane tops. Operational parameters that affect the pretreatment efficiency (measured as yield of sugars) were studied and optimized. Changes in structural properties of the biomass were studied in relation to the pretreatment process using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis, and the changes in chemical composition was also monitored. The biomass pretreated with the optimized novel method could yield 0.798 g of reducing sugars per gram of pretreated biomass upon enzymatic hydrolysis.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biofuels, National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR), Trivandrum 695 019, India.
authors.forename: Raveendran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sindhu
authors.forename: Mathiyazhakan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuttiraja
authors.forename: Parameswaran
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Binod
authors.forename: Varghese Elizabeth
authors.initials: VE
authors.lastname: Preeti
authors.forename: Soolankandath Variem
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Sandhya
authors.forename: Sankar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vani
authors.forename: Rajeev Kumar
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Sukumaran
authors.forename: Ashok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pandey
mesh_terms: D000431:Ethanol / Q000378:metabolism*; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D031786:Saccharum / Q000737:chemistry*; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared; D013501:Surface-Active Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D013501:Surface-Active Agents; D000431:Ethanol