The Influence of Hemicellulose and Lignin Removal on the Enzymatic Digestibility from Sugarcane Bagasse

Sugarcane bagasse (SCB) was pretreated with liquid hot water (LHW) and aqueous ammonia (AA), with the objective of investigating the influence of hemicellulose and lignin removal on the enzymatic digestibility and sugar recovery. The experimental results show that LHW and aqueous ammonia have a good performance in terms of hemicellulose dissolution and lignin removal respectively. The biggest xylan recovery of 74.3 % was obtained for LHW pretreatment at 160 °C, 5 %?w/v for 20 min with the xylan dissolution of 83.1 %. And the biggest lignin removal of 84.0 % was obtained for aqueous ammonia pretreatment at 160 °C, 10 %?w/v for 60 min. Moreover, the aperture and surface area of the sample were enlarged by the liquid hot water, which improves the accessibility of the substrate to the enzyme. The lignin removal caused by aqueous ammonia pretreatment can reduce the absorption of enzyme. In addition, the correlation between the compositional change and the enzymatic digestibility indicates that the removal of hemicellulose was more effective than lignin for destruction of the hemicellulose–lignin–cellulose structure.