Design of experiments driven optimization of alkaline pretreatment and saccharification for sugarcane bagasse

•Simultaneous optimisation of pretreatment and saccharification using design tool.•High-resolution Design of Experiments maximizes sugar release in sugarcane bagasse.•Fractional Factorial Design was combined with a Central Composite Orthogonal design.•Design of Experiments monitored by compositional analysis of biomass. To maximize the sugar release from sugarcane bagasse, a high-resolution Fractional Factorial Design (FFD) was combined with a Central Composite Orthogonal (CCO) design to simultaneously evaluate a wide range of variables for alkaline pretreatment (NaOH: 0.1–1 mol/L, temperature: 100–220 °C, and time: 20–80 min) and enzymatic saccharification (enzyme loading: 2.5–17.5%, and reaction volume: 550–850 µL). A total of 46 experimental conditions were evaluated and the maximum sugar yield (423 mg/g) was obtained after 18 h enzymatic hydrolysis under optimized conditions (0.25 mol/L NaOH at 202 °C for 40 min, with 12.5% of enzyme loading). Biomass compositional analyses showed that the pretreatments strongly removed lignin (up to 70%), silica (up to 80%) and promoted cellulose enrichment (25–110%). This robust design of experiments resulted in maximizing enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency of sugarcane bagasse and further indicated that this combined approach is versatile for other lignocellulosic biomasses.