Facile pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass using deep eutectic solvents

In this work, three kinds of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) were facilely prepared and used in the pretreatment of corncob, including monocarboxylic acid/choline chloride, dicarboxylic acid/choline chloride and polyalcohol/choline chloride. The enhanced delignification and subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency were found to be related to the acid amount, acid strength and the nature of hydrogen bond acceptors. The XRD, SEM and FT-IR results consistently indicated that the structures of corncob were disrupted by the removal of lignin and hemicellulose in the pretreatment process. In addition, the optimal pretreatment temperature and time were 90°C and 24h, respectively. This study explored the roles of various DESs combinations, pretreatment temperature and time to better utilize the DESs in the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass.