Abstract
A new pretreatment technique for cellulosic ethanol production from rice straw and wood chip with supercritical dimethyl ether (DME) was performed. Finely-milled rice straw and wood chip were reacted with supercritical DME, to break down the lignin and to hydrolyze the cellulose and hemicellulose. Componential analysis by HPLC was made to determine the saccharification. The result shows that monosaccharide such as glucose and fructose was produced from rice straw. The saccharification was estimated to be about 12wt%, which suggests the possibility of cellulose decomposition with supercritical DME. However, the saccharide yield was low as compared with that of pretreatment with supercritical water. Few monosaccharides were produced from wood chip which contains much lignin.
