A novel autoclave-assisted nanoparticle pre-treatment for improved sugar recovery from potato peel waste: process optimisation, nanoparticle recyclability and bioethanol production

This study optimised a novel autoclave-assisted Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticle pre-treatment (NAAP) for the improvement of reducing sugar (RS) recovery from potato peel waste. The optimised NAAP was further assessed for other lignocellulosic substrates, recyclability, animal feed and bioethanol production. Maximum RS yield of 0.324 g/g was obtained with the optimised NAAP conditions. Recyclability resulted in an average RS yield of 0.254 g/g over three pre-treatment cycles. Moreover, the optimised NAAP for the pre-treatment of corn cob (0.021 g/g), cassava peels (0.242 g/g), bamboo stem (0.357 g/g), Amaranthus (0.428 g/g), sorghum leaves (0.867) and banana pseudostem (1.392 g/g) demonstrated its versatility. Furthermore, the potential of the optimised pre-treated biomass for animal feed waste valorisation and bioethanol production (22.82 g/L) was achieved. The present NAAP pre-treatment provides novel insights on the application of nanotechnology in lignocellulosic bioprocessing, which could eliminate chemical and enzyme usage, while reducing the process costs and its associated negative environmental impact.