Lactic acid production from rice straw in alkaline hydrothermal conditions in presence of NiO nanoplates

• Hydrothermal liquefaction of rice straw for lactic acid production is investigated.
• Optimization of conditions was carried out and effect of NiO nanoparticles with different morphology were studied.
• Maximum yield of lactic acid i.e. 58.81% was achieved.

The research study is based on alkaline hydrothermal liquefaction of rice straw using NiO nanoplates where temperature, reaction time and molar concentrations of alkali (NaOH) were varied to optimize lactic acid (LA) production. The highest yield of 58.81% for lactic acid was obtained at 260 °C for 2 h with 1 M NaOH and 0.052 g NiO nanoplates attributing to complete degradation of cellulosic rice straw. Influence of different morphological forms of NiO like nanoparticles, nanoplates and porous nanosheets were also investigated in this perspective where nanoplates had better catalytic activity. Lactic acid production was found to be highly dependent on and sensitive to slight changes in alkaline conditions in the existence of NiO nanoplates as catalyst.

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