Ultrasound Assisted Lime Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass toward Bioethanol Production

The present study acquaints optimization of ultrasound assisted lime pretreatment to reduce the time of lime pretreatment. The study was conducted on three lignocellulosic biomass materials, Areca nut husk (Areca catechu), bon bogori (Ziziphus rugosa), and moj (Albizia lucida) available in Northeast India, exploiting ultrasound for the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass along with lime augments the delignification ratio. The present study reports removal of 68% (bon bogori), 65% (Areca nut husk), and 64% (moj) of the lignin present in the naive lignocellulosic fiber with good recovery of total solid and fermentable sugars, respectively. The simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) process for the production of bioethanol was also carried out using baker's yeast. The yield of ethanol was found to be in the range from 0.32 to 0.43 for all the ultrasound assisted lime pretreated biomasses.