Bioethanol production from corn straw pretreated with deep eutectic solvents

Background Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) have gained increasing attention as alternative solvents of environmental unfriendly solvents for biomass pretreatment. Results In this study, bioethanol production from DES-pretreated corn straw was investigated. The results revealed effective lignin removal from corn straw after pretreatment with choline chloride/oxalic acid (C:O), choline chloride/glycerol (C:G), or choline chloride/urea (C:U) DESs. After pretreatment with DESs, cellulose conversion significantly increased to 96.51% from 44.35% in the case of untreated corn straw. The best performance was obtained after the pretreatment of corn straw with C:O with a mass ratio of 1:15 at 120°C for 6 h, and this was mainly attributed to high lignin removal (60.60%). Another experiment showed that corn straw pretreated with C:G had a cellulose conversion of 86.82%, a glucose yield of 63.57%, and an ethanol yield of 54.86%. Conclusions Overall, this study demonstrated that the pretreatment of corn straw by a suitable DES can lead to efficient bioethanol production. How to cite: Liu J, Wang C, Zhao X, et al. Bioethanol production from corn straw pretreated with deep eutectic solvents. Electron J Biotechnol 2023;62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejbt.2022.12.004 .