Recyclability of an ionic liquid for biomass pretreatment

•Solvent properties significantly change with lignin and water contents.•A mixture solvent provides greater performance than EMIM-AC.•Reused EMIM-AC shows more drastic degradation compared with fresh EMIM-AC.

This study investigated the possibility of reusing an ionic liquid for the pretreatment of biomass. The effects of lignin and water content in a pretreatment solvent on pretreatment products were examined, along with the recyclability of an ionic liquid for pretreatment. It was discovered that the presence of lignin and water within a pretreatment solvent resulted in a far less effective pretreatment process. 1-Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate/ethanolamine (60/40 vol%) presents more promising properties than EMIM-AC, providing a small decrease in sugar conversion and also a small increase of lignin deposition with an increasing lignin amount in the pretreatment solvent. Deteriorations of the ionic liquid were observed from considerably low sugar conversions and lignin extraction after using the 5th and 7th batch, respectively. Furthermore, the changes of ionic liquid properties and lignin accumulation in ionic liquid were determined by analyzing their thermal decomposition behavior (TGA) and chemical functional groups (FTIR and 1H NMR).