Production of Reducing Sugars from Dilute Acid Hydrolysis of Rice Straw

Rice straw represents a huge percentage of agricultural residues across the world that is grossly underutilized and mostly burnt. This paper focuses on the use of dilute acids to hydrolyze rice straw with a focus of producing sugars that can be used for value added products. Acid hydrolysis was carried out at different concentrations of hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid and acetic acid on 5% w/v and 7% w/v rice straw. Results show that maximum reducing sugar of 32.23% and 29.56% was obtained within 3 hours for 0.3% v/v HCl and H2SO4 respectively. Maximum reducing sugar obtained for 7% v/v acetic acid in 8 hours was 27.11%. Hydrolysis carried out at 5%w/v rice straw showed marginally better yields when compared with reactions carried out at 7% w/v rice straw. Results showed percentage hydrolysis yield of 29.56, 32.23 and 27.12 for 5% w/v rice straw and 27.21, 31.12 and 25.11 for 7% w/v rice straw for sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid and acetic acids respectively.