The effect of ionic liquid pretreatment on sawdust

Sawdust is a waste by product from timber industry. Sawdust mainly consists of cellulose that can be utilized as carbon source for microorganism the hydrogen production under anaerobic fermentation. Pretreatment of sawdust can be either physical or chemical pretreatment. In this research, chemical treatment is choosing as pretreatment method of sawdust. To overcome some problem of other type chemical pretreatment which are not environmental friendly and also involve harmful particle. Ionic liquid or known as green solvent is use as alternative way for pretreatment. To overcome the higher consumption of ionic liquid for pretreatment, co-solvent dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) was employed together with ionic liquid. The objectives of this study are to study the effect of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([BMIM]Cl) pretreatment on sawdust at different sawdust concentration and to study the effect of co-solvent dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) on the ([BMIM]Cl) treated sawdust. In this research sawdust undergo sieve, grind and dry process. In dissolution of sawdust different concentration of sawdust dispersed in different concentration of DMSO and ([BMIM]Cl). Three type of concentration use 5 wt%, 10 wt% and 15 wt% in pretreatment process at constant temperature and time which are 80°C and 24 hours. Sawdust structure characterize with XRD, FT-IR and TGA. The result classify into two, effect concentration of sawdust and effect of concentration of DMSO. Both uses XRD, FTIR and TGA for characterize the changing of sawdust structure for untreated and pretreated sawdust. Based on the observation, showed that the higher concentration of sawdust not gives high effect in the pretreatment respectively. It also showed that the uses of DMSO not give effect to the structure of sawdust. DMSO save to use as co-solvent on ([BMIM]Cl) treated sawdust.