Alkali pretreatment at different temperatures and concentrations
Conversion of cotton-based waste textiles to ethanol by enzymatic
degradation and fermentation was investigated. The materials
used were cotton linter and a waste material from blue jeans
textiles. The cellulose contents of these materials were 98% ± 1%
and 93% ± 1%, respectively. The cotton and jeans with no pretreatment
were enzymatically hydrolyzed to glucose by cellulase and bglucosidase
for 2 days, and resulted into 24.1% and 23.6% digestion,
respectively. Hydrolysis of pure cellulose (Avicel) at identical conditions
was more successful, where 38.7% of the cellulose was converted
to glucose.