Enzymatic Saccharification of Rice Straw under Influence of Recycled Ionic Liquid Pretreatments

Lignocellulosic biomass is one of a promising challenge for biorefinery processing with competitive costs to produce value added products, including biofuels and chemicals. We reported here that efficient ionic liquid (IL), 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([C2mim][OAc]), pretreatments of rice straw can be achieved with 71.83 min of duration time, 128.4 oC of reaction temperature, and 5% w/w loading mass ratio. Enzymatic saccharification of IL- pretreated rice straw is significantly increased when compared to untreated ones, which yield glucose product about 90% yield. Additionally, we also report that using different types of anti-solvents, including methanol, water, and acetone, has different capability of cellulose recovery in regeneration step. The recyclability of [C2mim][OAc] using methanol as an anti-solvent is shown to retain more than 90% efficiency for 5 times without any modification in pretreatment process.