doi:10.3390/en12091703engPortero Barahona, PatriciaCarvajal Barriga, Enrique JavierMartín-Gil, JesúsMartín-Ramos, PabloSugarcane bagasse hydrolysis enhancement by microwave-assisted sulfolane pretreatmentART-2019-111402Sugarcane bagasse is the major by-product of the sugarcane industry and, due to its abundant availability, it has been extensively studied for lignocellulosic bioconversion in the production of bioethanol and other value-added commercial products. In the study presented herein, a combined pretreatment using sulfolane, TiO2 and alkali microwave irradiation (MW-A) was assessed for the dissolution of lignin prior to enzymatic saccharification of holocellulose. Total reducing sugars (TRS) and saccharinic acid yields were investigated. The increase in NaOH concentration up to 5% and in temperature from 120 °C to 140 °C were found to have a positive influence on both yields. While increasing the reaction time from 5 to 60 min only led to an increase in TRS yield <2%, a reaction time of 30 min almost doubled the saccharinic acids production. TRS yields and saccharinic acid production were approximately 5% and 33% higher when the sulfolane-TiO2 reaction medium was used, as compared to MW-A in water, reaching up to 64.8% and 15.24 g/L of saccharinic acids, respectively. The proposed MW-A pretreatment may hold promise for industrial applications, given the good TRS yields obtained, and the associated enzyme and time/energy savings. The use of sulfolane-TiO2 reaction medium is encouraged if saccharinic acids are to be recovered too.2019http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/7899410.3390/en12091703http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/78994oai:zaguan.unizar.es:78994Energies 12, 9 (2019), 1703 [15 pp.]byhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess