Pretreatment of Paddy Husk Used for Bioethanol Production with Deep Eutectic Solvent

Agricultural wastes as lignocellulosic biomass have shown good potential for producing bioethanol. There are three main steps in the production of bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass; pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation. Expanding the surface area of biomass, dissolving hemicellulose and/or lignin, and reducing the particle sizes of biomass are the most important goals of the pretreatment stage. Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are used widely in the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass. In this study, the deep eutectic solvent (DES) was used in the pretreatment of paddy husk. The effect of molar ratios of ChCl/Boric acid (1:1, 1:2, 2:1) on lignin removal percentage was investigated. As a result, the highest lignin removal percentage was obtained as 8.5% by using the molar ratio of 1:1. Obtained results were confirmed by ATR/FT-IR analyses.