Nanoparticle-induced enzyme pretreatment method for increased glucose production from lignocellulosic biomass under cold conditions.

BACKGROUND: Appropriate pretreatment strategies that fractionate sugarcane bagasse (SB) are essential for the successful use of this feedstock in ethanol production. In this paper, we investigate a purely enzymatic process to achieve increased production of reducing sugars (RS) from SB in the presence of MgO nanoparticles (MgN) subjected to a three-step sequential enzyme treatment.

RESULT: Pretreatment of SB with protease activated by magnesium oxide nanoparticles (MgN-pro) at 95 °C showed an increase in amino acid production by 6.18-fold compared to the untreated enzyme set at the same temperature. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) studies showed an 18-fold removal of lignin from the samples subjected to protease (+ MgN) treatment compared to untreated samples. When the MgN-pro pretreated samples were subjected to pretreatment with xylanase activated by magnesium oxide nanoparticles (MgN-xyl), more than 30-fold increased RS was produced at 8 °C compared to cellulase (cel) pretreated samples. Xylanase pretreated SB samples produced 1.82- and 1.91-fold increased reducing sugar and glucose respectively at 8 °C in the presence of MgN compared to untreated samples at the same temperature.

CONCLUSION: The results presented here show the efficiency of the proposed method for improving the enzymatic digestibility of SB and explain the pretreatment action mechanism. These findings have potential implications in bio-ethanol, bio-fuel, and agro industries. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.