Employing deep eutectic solvent synthesized by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide and ethylene glycol to advance enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of rape straw

An efficient deep eutectic solvent (DES) was synthesized by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and ethylene glycol (EG) and employed to treat rape straw (RS) for advancing enzymatic saccharification in this work. By optimizing the pretreatment parameters, the results displayed that the novel DES was strongly selective towards removing lignin and xylan while preserving cellulose. Under optimum conditions with 1:6 of CTAB: EG in DES, 180 °C and 80 min, the enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of RS was enhanced by 46.0% due to the 62.2% of delignification and 53.2% of xylan removal during CTAB: EG pretreatment. In terms of the recalcitrant structure of RS, DES pretreatment caused the increment of cellulosic accessibility, reduction of hydrophobicity and surface area of lignin, and migration of cellulosic crystalline structure, which was associated with its enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency. Overall, this study presented an emerging method for the effective fractionation and valorization of lignocellulosic biomass within biorefinery technology.