High conversion of sugarcane bagasse into monosaccharides based on sodium hydroxide pretreatment at low water consumption and wastewater generation.

The generation of a great quantity of black liquor (BL) and waste wash water (WWW) has been key problems of the alkaline pretreatment. This work tried to build a sustainable way to recycle the BL for pretreating sugarcane bagasse (SCB) and the WWW for washing the residual solid (RS) of alkali-treated SCB which would be subsequently hydrolysed and fermented. The enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of the washed RS decreased with the recycling times of BL and WWW increasing. Tween80 at the loading of 0.25% (V/V) could notably improve the enzymatic hydrolysis and had no negative impact on the downstream fermentation. Compared with the non-recycling and BL recycling ways based on alkaline pretreatment, the BL-WWW recycling way could not only maintain high conversion of carbohydrate into monosaccharides and save alkali amount of 45.5%, but also save more than 80% water and generate less than 15% waste water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]