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A cost-effective room temperature alkali pretreatment method for enhanced bioethanol production from rice straw

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  • Sahil Dhull
  • Soumen K Maiti

Abstract

The present study aimed to optimize NaOH pretreatment at room temperature (26°C), an economic approach not previously explored for rice straw (RS) pretreatment. Statistical optimization of RS pretreatment at room temperature gave an optimum pretreatment condition of 7.4% (w/v) biomass loading with 3.34% NaOH soaking for 16.04 h pretreatment time. The pretreatment of raw RS at optimum conditions resulted in 56.2%, w/w cellulose content and 67% delignification with an enhanced crystallinity index of 45.7% compared to raw RS, 33.2%. The effectiveness of the pretreatment method developed in this study was also assessed by the high cellulose conversion efficiency of 93% after enzymatic hydrolysis. Further, this study exploits the significance of pre-hydrolysis time in achieving a high cellulose conversion rate to bioethanol in the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) process. A pre-hydrolysis time of 8 h at an enzyme dosage of 30 FPU/g pretreated RS followed by the SSF process of 15% (w/v) room temperature alkali pretreated RS produced a high ethanol titer of 24.5 g/L with a productivity of 1.02 g/L/h. Further increment of pretreated RS loading to 20% (w/v) resulted in an improved ethanol titer of 32.2 g/L with a productivity of 1.34 g/L/h (63% of maximum ethanol yield). Thus, the study assesses the potential of the developed pretreatment method operated with no external energy requirement, negligible cellulosic fraction loss after the pretreatment process, and a high overall ethanol yield of 205 L/tonne alkali pretreated RS.

Suggested Citation

  • Sahil Dhull & Soumen K Maiti, 2025. "A cost-effective room temperature alkali pretreatment method for enhanced bioethanol production from rice straw," Energy & Environment, , vol. 36(7), pages 3130-3150, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:engenv:v:36:y:2025:i:7:p:3130-3150
    DOI: 10.1177/0958305X251343072
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Park, Yong Cheol & Kim, Jun Seok, 2012. "Comparison of various alkaline pretreatment methods of lignocellulosic biomass," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 31-35.
    2. Jin, Xianchun & Ma, Jiangshan & Song, Jianing & Liu, Gao-Qiang, 2021. "Promoted bioethanol production through fed-batch semisimultaneous saccharification and fermentation at a high biomass load of sodium carbonate-pretreated rice straw," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).
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