Alkaline pretreatment improves saccharification and ethanol yield from waste money bills.

Waste money bills (WMB) is a by-product of the money making process that consists of rich-cellulosic material for many biotechnological applications. This waste money bills is unusable and usually exhausted. Saccharification was improved using various concentrations of sodium hydroxide, NaOH (0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0% v/v) and various reaction times (20, 30, and 40 min) during pretreatment at 121 °C. Prior to ethanol fermentation, the highest glucose yield (62.2 mg/mL) was found by pretreatment consisting of 30 min at 2.0% NaOH, and it increased 33.8% as compared to an untreated sample. The highest amount of ethanol was obtained (26.1 mg/mL) during fermentation, and this was increased 95.3 and 22.5% as compared to aerobic and anaerobic conditions respectively during pretreatment with 2.0% NaOH for 30 min. Under anaerobic conditions, ethanol fermentation was enhanced by adding 0.4 mmol benzoic acid. Production of ethanol from waste money bills would cut waste management costs and make profitable.