Comparison of Chemical Pretreatment for Recovery of Fermentable Sugars and Enzymatic Saccharification

Abstract

Pearl millet biomass represents an unused source for biofuel production. Pretreatment is required to break down complex structure and prepare the pearl millet biomass for enzymatic hydrolysis. The efficiency of chemicals (Ortho-phosphoric acid (H3 PO4 ), alkaline H2 O2 and lime) pretreatment on pearl millet was investigated in the present study. Acid (16 % of acid, 12.5 % of total solid loading, 121°C of temperature and 3 h of incubation time) pretreated biomass sample showed highest (0.418 g / g of biomass) sugar release, crystallinity index (36.43 %) and inhibitor concentration (4.02 %). The parameters were optimized by using Response Surface Methodology in a Optimal Custom Design. The studies confirmed that lime pretreatment was promising as it had high crystallinity index (70.18 %), fermentable sugar release (0.234 g/g of biomass) and minimal production of inhibitors, required less energy input and environmentally safe. Pretreated biomass was further characterised by SEM and X-ray diffraction (XRD)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.201770

Pages

273 - 278

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords