Poludasu Rama Mohan, Bathal Vijaya Kumar, and Obulam Vijaya Sarathi Reddy

pp. 177 - 185

Abstract

The present study was carried out to find out the optimum pretreatment conditions for increasing the cellulose yield in
bagasse substrate. Peracetic acid (PAA), a powerful oxidizing agent that removes lignin, was used in this study. Response
surface methodology was employed for the simultaneous analysis of pretreatment conditions like substrate concentration,
PAA loading, pretreatment temperature and pretreatment time on cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin yield in bagasse. The
experiments were carried out according to central composite design in order to establish the optimum conditions for increasing the cellulose yield in pretreated bagasse substrate. The optimized conditions to obtain maximum cellulose yield (72.6%)
were; a substrate concentration of 2%, PAA loading of 20%, pretreatment temperature of 120ºC and pretreatment time of 120
min. There is a good correlation between the actual and predicted results. Saccharification results showed that the yield of
reducing sugar was higher in the PAA pretreated bagasse.