Ionic Liquid Pretreatment of Lignocellulosic Biomass for Enhanced Enzymatic Delignification

Ionic liquids (ILs), a potentially attractive “green,” recyclable alternative to environmentally harmful volatile organic compounds, have been increasingly exploited as solvents and/or cosolvents and/or reagents in a wide range of applications, including pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass for further processing. The enzymatic delignification of biomass to degrade lignin, a complex aromatic polymer, has received much attention as an environmentally friendly process for clean separation of biopolymers including cellulose and lignin. For this purpose, enzymes are generally isolated from naturally occurring fungi or genetically engineered fungi and used in an aqueous medium. However, enzymatic delignification has been found to be very slow in these conditions, sometimes taking several months for completion. In this chapter, we highlight an environmentally friendly and efficient approach for enzymatic delignification of lignocellulosic biomass using room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) as (co)solvents or/and pretreatment agents. The method comprises pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass in IL-aqueous systems before enzymatic delignification, with the aim of overcoming the low delignification efficiency associated with low enzyme accessibility to the solid substrate and low substrate and product solubilities in aqueous systems. We believe the processes described here can play an important role in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass—the most abundant renewable biomaterial in the world—to biomaterials, biopolymers, biofuels, bioplastics, and hydrocarbons.