Lignocellulosic biomass (LCB) from agriculture residues has gained a lot of attention in recent years for its conversion to useful by-products. The one drawback that the conversion of biomass faces is its recalcitrant nature which can be overcome by effective pretreatment technology. One such process is the EnZolv, a novel pretreatment technique used for delignification of biomass and it was recognized as an eco-friendly approach. The main objective of our present study is to optimize the novel EnZolv process parameters for enhanced release of reducing sugar from banana fiber. Banana fiber pre-optimization for EnZolv pretreated at 100% moisture content, incubated at 40 °C temperature, with an enzyme load of 50 U·g-1 of biomass for an incubation time of 5 h at a shaking speed of 100 rpm yielded enhanced sugar release of 1.7 mg·mL-1. The effect of pretreatment on proximate composition results in a decrease in the volatile matter (53%) and moisture percentage (1.07%) and an increase in the other parameters such as ash content (12%) and fixed carbon content (34%) under the optimized condition. A significantly higher release of phenol content 1264 µg·mL-1 equivalent to gallic acid suggests that EnZolv pretreatment confirms the degradation of lignin content in the biomass.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12088-023-01130-4.
Keywords: Banana fiber; Proximate analysis; Reducing sugar; Total phenol content.
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