Waste to wealth: A novel low temperature eco-friendly lignocellulose pretreatment strategy for glucose production

Acid pretreatment is considered as one of the most promising pretreatment strategies. However, the operation temperature of acid pretreatment is commonly higher, and acid pretreatment is difficult to remove lignin. Herein, a novel pretreatment strategy (dilute sulfuric acid coupling K 2 S 2 O 8 (DA-PDS) pretreatment) was proposed to remove lignin at lower temperature. The feasibility of DA-PDS pretreatment was predicted by means of density functional theory (DFT). Then, the optimal operation conditions of DA-PDS pretreatment were studied. Temperature was proved to be the most critical factor affecting the DA-PDS pretreatment. The optimal reaction conditions of DA-PDS pretreatment were 5 % DA and 6 % PDS at 80 °C for 2 h. The operation temperature was 40 °C lower than common acid pretreatment. On this condition, the cellulose content and enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency by DA-PDS pretreatment were about 59 % and 73 %, which were 11 % and 13 % higher than that of DA pretreatment, respectively. In addition, this study revealed the mechanism of DA-PDS pretreatment. DA not only accelerated radical generation rate, but also improved the contact probability between radical and lignin. Radicals generated by PDS destroyed the structure of lignin. This made DA more easily to remove hemicellulose . This work presented a novel and energy-saving strategy for lignocellulose pretreatment.