A deeper understanding of the pretreatment process of lignocellulosic biomass could enhance the production efficiency of biofuels. Sweet sorghum straws (SSS) were subjected to heavy ion beams irradiation (HIBI) pretreatment and then hydrolyzed with 2.4 FPU of cellulase. Notably, the pretreatment has been proved to increase enzymatic digestibility of SSS. The reducing sugar yield and hydrolysis yield of SSS pretreated by 600 Gray (Gy) of HIBI reached to 7.23 mg/mL and 34.43% for 36 h, respectively, which was significantly higher than that of the untreated SSS (4.93 mg/mL of reducing sugar and 23.47% of hydrolysis yield). Additionally, the analysis of pretreated SSS showed that the destruction of amorphous region and surface ultrastructure as well as the transformation of polymorphs (Iα →Iβ) of cellulose I were major effects on SSS by HIBI pretreatment. The results demonstrated that HIBI could be chosen as an effective physical pretreatment process for enhancing enzymatic hydrolysis yield of lignocellulosic biomass.
Keywords: Crystallinity index; Enzymatic hydrolysis yield; Heavy ion beams irradiation; Polymorphs; Surface ultrastructure; Sweet sorghum straw polysaccharides.
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