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Deep eutectic solvent pretreatment of Bambara groundnut haulm for enhanced saccharification and bioethanol production

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Abstract

Five deep eutectic solvents (DES) were screened for their effectiveness in improving biosugar yield in Bambara groundnut haulm (BGH) for bioethanol production. Choline chloride-lactic acid (ChCl-LA) treatment provided the most promising result and was further optimised by investigating the effect of temperature and time on cellulose loss and enzymatic sugar yield. ChCl-LA pretreatment at 100 °C for 1 h was observed to be the best condition for hemicellulose (54.5%) and lignin (60.7%) removal along with optimum sugar recovery of 94.8%. The resulting hydrolysate was concentrated and fermented for 72 h with Saccharomyces cerevisiae BY4743, and a maximum ethanol concentration of 11.57 g/L was achieved with an ethanol yield of 0.38 g/g sugar and productivity of 0.19 g/L/h. From the results obtained, it is evident that deep eutectic solvents are effective for breaking the recalcitrance in BGH due to their high delignification capacity. Furthermore, a recovery of the amorphous glucose and xylose in the BGH prior to DES pretreatment is vital to prevent sugar loss, thereby improving the biosugar yield for bioethanol production.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Prashant Bhagwat, Durban University of Technology, South Africa, for critically reviewing the manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa (Thuthuka grants 93982 and 114227), and the ARC-DUT-UFS consortium supported. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily attributed to the funders.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology and Food Technology, Durban University of Technology, P.O. BOX 1334, Durban, 4000, South Africa

    Somiame Itseme Okuofu, Suren Singh & Santhosh Pillai

  2. Agricultural Research Council–Vegetable and Ornamental Plant Institute, Pretoria, South Africa

    Abe Shegro Gerrano

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  1. Somiame Itseme Okuofu
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  2. Abe Shegro Gerrano
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Contributions

Somiame Itseme Okuofu: methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft. Abe Shegro Gerrano: resources, writing—review and editing. Suren Singh: resources, writing—review and editing—co-supervision. Santhosh Pillai: conceptualisation, methodology, resources, writing—review and editing—supervision, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Santhosh Pillai.

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Okuofu, S.I., Gerrano, A.S., Singh, S. et al. Deep eutectic solvent pretreatment of Bambara groundnut haulm for enhanced saccharification and bioethanol production. Biomass Conv. Bioref. 12, 3525–3533 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-020-01053-w

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