The applicability of ionic liquid-methanol cosolvent system to both extract bio-oil and simultaneously pretreat the carbohydrate\r\nfraction of jatropha and safflower biomass for enzymatic hydrolysis to fermentable sugars is presented. Although pretreatment with\r\neither the cosolvent or pure ionic liquid yielded comparable hydrolysis kinetics and fermentable sugar yields on safflower whole\r\nseeds, the addition of alcohol to the ionic liquid was necessary to optimally recover both bio-oil and fermentable sugars.The ionic\r\nliquid [C2mim][Ac] was far more effective than [C2mim][MeSO4] with optimum processing conditions occurring at a cosolvent\r\nconcentration of 70ââ?¬â??30 wt% of [C2mim][Ac] to methanol and a processing temperature of 120Ã?°C. Under these conditions, the\r\nmajority of the bio-oil was extracted and 25.4 wt% (safflower) and 14.3 wt% (jatropha) of the whole seed biomass were recovered\r\nas fermentable sugars. The recovery of fermentable sugars from the carbohydrate fraction was as high as 74% and 78% for jatropha\r\nand safflower seeds, respectively, when using [C2mim][Ac] cosolvent. A preliminary theoretical analysis of two potential oil seed\r\nprocessing pathways using the cosolvent system suggested that the corecovery of bio-oil, fermentable sugars, and a protein rich\r\nmeal can recover a majority of the energy contained in the original biomassââ?¬â?a result that improves upon the traditional approach\r\nof solely extracting bio-oil.
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