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[21,22].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 [23]. 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