Four pretreatment processes including ionic liquids, steam explosion, lime, and dilute acid were used for enzymatic hydrolysis of sweet sorghum bagasse. Compared with the other three pretreatment approaches, steam-explosion pretreatment showed the greatest improvement on enzymatic hydrolysis of the bagasse. The maximum conversion of cellulose and the concentration of glucose obtained from enzymatic hydrolysis of steam explosion bagasse reached 70% and 25 g/L, respectively, which were both 2.5 times higher than those of the control (27% and 11 g/L). The results based on the analysis of SEM photos, FTIR, XRD and NMR detection suggested that both the reduction of crystallite size of cellulose and cellulose degradation from the Iα and Iβ to the Fibril surface cellulose and amorphous cellulose were critical for enzymatic hydrolysis. These pretreatments disrupted the crystal structure of cellulose and increased the available surface area, which made the cellulose better accessible for enzymatic hydrolysis.
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