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Abstract The present results have revealed the following conclusions: 1. The chemo-physical approach of using a mixture of two carboxylic acids (CA and MA) for CS pretreatment has successfully proven to be an aspiring method for bioethanol production. The impact of acid concentration temperature, time, and S/L ratio was inspected for the determination of the pretreatment optimum conditions. 2. Under mild pretreatment operating conditions, up to 80% of lignin was dissolved, and 99% of the hemicellulose was removed with high cellulose recovery (90%). 3. The chemo-physical pretreatment proved the importance of the effective removal of hemicellulose and lignin on overall cellulose recovery, which in turn enhanced the accessibility of the enzymes to the cellulose. This pretreatment not only produced 10 g/L bioethanol but also yielded net positive energy of 16.4 MJ/kg. 4. Compositional analysis, FTIR, SEM, TGA, and elemental analysis revealed major structural changes after CS pretreatment, besides, the high glucose and bioethanol production yield proved the successful pretreatment, delignification, and enzymatic accessibility processes. 5. Future research may try other carboxylic acid mixtures for CS pretreatment for bioethanol production for higher delignification and cellulose recovery. Or else, the CA/MA mixture can be performed on other agricultural wastes to test its efficiency. 6. Additional research should be conducted to perform the enzymatic hydrolysis step using a lab-made enzyme which would reduce the economic cost of the whole process. Future research should figure out a purification method to obtain purified bioethanol. |