Capturing CO2 to reversible ionic liquids for dissolution pretreatment of cellulose towards enhanced enzymatic hydrolysis

To overcome the natural recalcitrance of cellulose for glucose production in aqueous media catalyzed by enzyme, in this study, a dissolution pretreatment strategy was developed by using in situ formed CO 2 -based reversible ionic compounds (RICs)/DMSO mixed organic electrolytes under mild conditions. The influences of the constitution of RICs, CO 2 pressure, dissolution pretreatment time on the physic-chemical structure of cellulose were investigated systematically by FTIR, XRD, SEM, AFM towards in-depth understanding of the correlations between the pretreatment conditions, micro-scale structure and enzymatic saccharification of cellulose. The results showed that the tetramethyl guanidine (TMG) based RICs solvent system [TMGH] 2 + [O 2 COCH 2 CH 2 OCO 2 ] 2− /DMSO (X RICs  = 0.1, X RICs : the mole fraction of the formed RICs in the mixture) presented the best performance, which was evidenced by 100% glucose yield after the dissolution-regeneration pretreatment strategy under mild conditions (T = 60 °C, Pco 2  = 2.0 MPa, t = 2 h). Furthermore, the solvent system have good recyclability and usability.