Soybean straw, an abundant agricultural lignocellulosic byproduct, is a fibrous residue of soybean which is cultivated worldwide. About 200 million tons of soybean and an equivalent amount of soybean straw is produced throughout the world annually.The large quantity of soybean straws annually are
not being used efficiently but generally burnt for energy purpose or
partially collected for usage as animal feed . Some researches
have been carried out not only for adding the value of this
agricultural byproduct but also for diminishing of solid waste.
Reddy reported that soybean straw could be a suitable material for
the preparation of natural cellulose fiber, which has higher
breaking tenacity (2.7 g/den) and breaking elongation (3.9%) than
those of fibers obtained from wheat straw, sorghum stalk and
leaves but lower than that of cotton. There is also a growing
interest in bioconversion of soybean straw to cellulosic ethanol.
Soybean straw contains about 44–48% of cellulose, 12–15% of
hemicelluloses, 5–14% of lignin and only 2–5% of ash. The high
fixed-carbon and low ash content are favorable properties for the
preparation of AC