Improved reducing sugars production from enzymatic hydrolysis of rubber wood by surfactant-assisted hydrothermal pretreatment

In this work, a facile and environmentally friendly strategy was proposed for the production of reducing sugars from enzymatic hydrolysis of rubber wood by surfactant-assisted hydrothermal pretreatment. Compared with hydrothermal pretreatment, the addition of surfactants (Tween 40) significantly increased the reducing sugars concentration, the highest reducing sugars concentration was up to 22.47 g/L. After surfactant-assisted pretreatment, the crystallinity index of rubber wood hydrolysis residues increased and then decreased with the addition amount of Tween 40. The surfactant-assisted pretreated rubber wood featured high cellulose and hemicellulose conversion rates of 95.1% and 95.4% respectively, which was 122.2% and 41.1% higher than the hydrothermally pretreated rubber wood. It was also found that surfactant-assisted hydrothermal pretreatment had the same improvement effect on increasing the sugar production of other lignocellulose. The results showed that surfactant-assisted hydrothermal pretreatment is a promising and universal method for developing biomass-based products.