In this work, the sono-assisted alkaline pretreatment of
sugarcane bagasse was optimized using a central composite
design in which the glucose recovery after enzymatic hydrolysis
was used as the response function. Afterwards, enzymatic
hydrolysates derived from the best alkali-treated substrate were
fermented by an industrial strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
and the resulting ethanol yields were compared with those
derived from other pretreatment technologies such as steam explosion
with and without post-delignification with dilute sodium
hydroxide.