Pretreatment of <i>Miscanthus giganteus</i> with Lime and Oxidants for Biofuels

To make biomass more accessible for enzymatic hydrolysis, lime pretreatment of &lt;em&gt;Miscanthus giganteus&lt;/em&gt; with oxidants was explored from 100 to 150 °C. Composition data for the recovered solid were obtained to determine the effects of the reaction time, lime dosage, oxidant loading, and temperature on sugar production efficiency. Under selected conditions (0.2 g of lime/g of biomass, 200 psig O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, and 150 °C for 1 h), delignification was 64.7%. The pretreated biomass was then followed by enzymatic hydrolysis. The yield of cellulose in the recovered solid to glucose was 91.7% and hemicellulose to xylose was 67.3%, 7.1 and 18.2 times larger than those obtained from raw biomass, respectively. Finally, pretreatment with oxidants substantially raised delignification of raw &lt;em&gt;M. giganteus&lt;/em&gt;, thereby enhancing enzymatic hydrolysis to sugars, while results were not improved when pretreatment included ammonium molybdate.