Steam Pretreatment of Rice Hulls to Release Fermentable Saccharides:An Approach to Improve Recovery of(Hemi)Cellulosic Sugars Through Multivariate Design

The conversion of rice hulls into fermentable saccharides was explored through steam pretreatment employing 2.5% SO_(2).The in teraction between temperature and time was assessed by means of the response surface method to achieve optimum contents of C6-sugars in water-insoluble solids(WIS)and C5-sugars in the liquor.Pretreatment carried out at 218℃ for 2.3 min released liquor containing 55.4 g/L of sugars(29.1 g/L of xylose).In parallel,the WIS was subjected to enzymatic saccharification using different solid and enzyme loads via an experimental design:assays using 22.0% WIS and 20.0 filter paper units(FPU)/g led to 90.6 g/L of glucose,corresponding to a yield of 86.4% and an overall yield of 72.4%.The data reported are the highest ever found for such raw material,making it attractive to compete with conventi on al lig no cellulosic biomass.