Pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass from sugar bagasse under microwave assisted dilute acid hydrolysis for biobutanol production.

Alternative renewable energy sources are the future potential energy that will benefit the country's overall energy shortage and demand. The efficient biofuel production depends on the viability of the raw material used. The holistic approach of this study is to establish an integrated bioprocess from lignocellulosic material for biofuel synthesis. Sugar bagasse as one of the waste material, can be economically process for sugar extraction used in biofuel production. In this study, the optimum saccharification rate obtained was 43.62% when the biomass was pretreated at microwave temperature of 100 °C for 15 min with 2.5 g catalyst concentration. The results attained shows that hydrolysis time reduces to approximately 40-50% in compare with other traditional heating method. The sample was analyzed by using UV spectrophotometer and HPLC and computed by using Response Surface Method in MINITAB 17, whereas the structural changes of the residue was detected by using ATR-FTIR and ESEM.