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Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass with Low-cost Ionic Liquids
Published on: August 10, 2016
Capturing CO2 to reversible ionic liquids for dissolution pretreatment of cellulose towards enhanced enzymatic
Xiang Li1, Qinqin Xu1, Hongwei Shen2
1Department of New Energy Science & Engineering, College of Materials & Metallurgy, Guizhou University, West Campus, Huaxi District, Guiyang, China.
Abstract:
To overcome the natural recalcitrance of cellulose for glucose production in aqueous media catalyzed by enzyme, in this study, a dissolution pretreatment strategy was developed by using in situ formed CO2-based reversible ionic compounds (RICs)/DMSO mixed organic electrolytes under mild conditions. The influences of the constitution of RICs, CO2 pressure, dissolution pretreatment time on the physic-chemical structure of cellulose were investigated systematically by FTIR, XRD, SEM, AFM towards in-depth understanding of the correlations between the pretreatment conditions, micro-scale structure and enzymatic saccharification of cellulose. The results showed that the tetramethyl guanidine (TMG) based RICs solvent system [TMGH]2+[O2COCH2CH2OCO2]2-/DMSO (XRICs = 0.1, XRICs: the mole fraction of the formed RICs in the mixture) presented the best performance, which was evidenced by 100% glucose yield after the dissolution-regeneration pretreatment strategy under mild conditions (T = 60 °C, Pco2 = 2.0 MPa, t = 2 h). Furthermore, the solvent system have good recyclability and usability.
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