Effect of various pretreatment conditions on enzymatic saccharification

Abstract

The present work deals with the delignification of wheat straw and sugarcane bagasse with different pretreatmenttechniques followed by saccharification with commercial and indigenously produced cellulase enzymes. 100 g of sugar canebagasse and whaet straw were treated with various concentrations of H2O2 (1-5% v/v) and its combination with 2% NaOHfor one hour under steam at 30 psi. Sugarcane bagasse was 88% delignified with 5% H2O2 + 2% NaOH whereas wheat strawshowed 51% delignification with 3% H2O2 + 2% NaOH. Moreover the saccharification with commercial cellulase enzyme wasfound to be 33.6% and 63.3% with pretreated wheat straw and sugarcane bagasse, respectively. However, very low levels ofsaccharification (6-14%) were found with indigenously produced cellulase enzyme.