Kinetic Study of Acid Hydrolysis of Rice Straw

Abstract

Rice straw is a renewable, cheap, and abundant waste in tropical countries. The pentose content of rice straw can be used as a substrate for many types of value-added products such as xylitol and biofuel. Dilute acid hydrolysis mainly releases pentose from rice straw. The objective of the study was to determine the effect of H2SO4 concentration and reaction time on the xylose production. The variation of the main product xylose with the reaction time was described by a kinetic model and kinetic parameters were calculated to describe the variation of the xylose production with time. The optimum yield (19.35 g/L) was obtained at 0.24 mol/L H2SO4 and 30 minutes.