Pretreatment of mulberry stem by cholinium-based amino acid ionic liquids for succinic acid fermentation and its application in poly(butylene) succinate production.

Cholinium-glycinate ([Ch][Gly]) and cholinium-alanate ([Ch][Ala]) were investigated on the pretreatment of mulberry stem (MS). It resulted in an increase of glucose from 14% to more than 74% compared to the untreated sample. Pretreatment by reused [Ch][Gly] showed good performance for delignification of >60%, and improved structural polysaccharide digestion. Each fractional component has high potential for lignin purification, and succinic acid fermentation. The extracted lignin with [Ch][Gly] showed >90% purity with good qualities of aromatic unit as confirmed by FT-IR and 1H NMR spectra. The carbohydrate rich material was employed for succinic acid fermentation with the highest yield of succinic acid more than 0.89 gsuccinic acid/gglucose. After purification, poly(butylene) succinate (PBS) was synthesized, and was characterized in comparison to commercial PBS.