THE EFFECT OF LIGNIN REMOVAL BY ALKALINE PEROXIDE PRETREATMENT ON ENZYMATIC HYDROLYSIS OF FURFURAL RESIDUES

Furfural residues are pretreated by the alkaline peroxide at different severities to obtain the various substrates with different lignin content. The enzymatic saccharification of pretreated samples was studied to assess the effect of lignin removal in the hydrolysis process. The results showed that delignification significantly enhanced the enzymatic hydrolysis yield from furfural residues. However, the glucose yield improved slightly when the lignin was further removed over 32.6%. The maximum glucose yield of 92.2% was achieved when the pretreated sample with a lignin removal of 56.7% was hydrolyzed for 120 h at an enzyme loading of 25 FPU/g cellulose, which was 48.3% higher than those attained from raw material. However, further lignin removal did not increase the hydrolysis yield. The effect of enzyme loading on the enzymatic hydrolysis was also explored in this work. In addition, the structures of raw material and delignified samples were also characterized by XRD.