dc.description.abstract |
Lignocellulosic biomass is becoming a primary candidate for bio-fuels production,
due to the energy and food security concerns compared to starch and sugar based
feed stocks. However those biomasses has limited digestibility due to high lignin
content which is reluctant to microbial action in the subsequent step to bioethanol
production such as hydroly sis. This study evaluates the effect of Microwave
assisted alkali compared to alkali alone pretreated rice husk feedstock on the
improvement of lignin removal, cellulose yield and total y ield of reducing sugar
for production of bioethanol. The pretreatment were carried out using
concentration of 3.5% NaOH at temperature of 40, 60, 80
o
C, and MW irradiation
power of 300, 450, 600 W at pretreatment time of 15, 30, 60 min. The chemical
compositional anal y sis of raw and treated rice husk was characterized using
NREL and ASTM procedures in identify the biomass has a potential for
fermentable sugar production and The pretreated biomass was evaluated for its
reducing sugar y ield via dilute acid hydrol ysis (at 1.5% concentration) at a
temperature of 131
o
C and contact time of 24 min using DNS method. I t was found
that the raw rice husk used for this study has a composition of 33.97% cellulose,
30.48% hemicellulose and 24.13% lignin. A maximum lignin removal of 47.57%
and cellulose recover y of 66.52% were achieved with microwave assisted alkali
pretreatment at microwave power of 600W and contact time of 30min in contrast
to 25.15% lignin removal and 55.78% cellulose content recovery for in alkali
pretreatment at a temperature of 80
o
C and contact time 60 min. The maximum
reducing sugar (glucose) was observed for sample pretreated with MW assisted
alkali pretreated (at 600W microwave power and 30 min contact time) which was
380.2 mg/g compared to alkali pretreated alone which was 270.3mg/g at 80
o
C,
60min. |
en_US |