The selected conditions for LHW pretreatment were based on maximising sugar yields, and were subjected to a second round of enzymatic saccharification using the commercial Cellic® CTec2 enzyme from Novozymes A/S, Denmark.
Maximising sugar yields from these three fractions for a broad spectrum of uses including animal feedstock, human nutrition, and second generation biofuels is imperative for efficient utilisation of plant productivity in the face of a burgeoning global population.
Enzymatic hydrolysis was also measured to evaluate the optimal pretreatment conditions for maximising sugar recovery.
Various pretreatment and saccharification conditions were investigated to identify the optimal conditions for maximising sugar release from the bamboo feedstock.
Desirability function was applied in this stage to maximize sugar yields and minimize inhibitor concentrations, resulting in overall sugars yield ∼60% and furfural concentration of 0.5 g/L.
Access to realistic kinetic data is important for predictions of optimal reaction conditions for the pretreatment of biomass for bioethanol processes, which is required to minimise production of inhibitory compounds and to maximise sugar and ethanol yields.
Conditions to maximize the total sugar yield are often not the same as those to maximize individual sugar yields [ 28].
Considering these two fractions, there are four main contributors that maximise total fermentable sugar yields of biofuel feedstocks: juice volume (V), sugar concentration ([ S]), biomass (B), and digestibility (D).
The response factors are pentose degradation, hexose degradation, pentose yield, hexose yield, sugar degradation, and sugar yield.
The optimum sugar yield is 32.37 % with 0.978 precision.
