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A RTICLE Novel Renewable Ionic Liquids as Highly Effective Solvents for Pretreatment of Rice Straw Biomass by Selective Removal of Lignin Xue-Dan Hou, 1,3 Thomas J. Smith,2 Ning Li,1 Min-Hua Zong1 1 State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering, College of Light Industry and Food Sciences, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China; telephone: þ86-20-2223-6669; fax: þ86-20-2223-6669 (N.L.); telephone: þ86-20-8711-1452; fax: þ86-20-2223-6669 (M.-H.Z.); e-mail: lining@; btmhzong@ 2 Biomedical Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK 3 College of Bioscience and Bioengineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China previously investigated non-renewable ILs, and thus present ABSTRACT: Cholinium amino acids ionic liquids a new and environmentally friendly way to pretreat ligno- ([Ch][AA] ILs), a novel type of bio-ILs that can easily be cellulose for production of fermentable sugars and total prepared from renewable biomaterials, were investigated for utilization of the biomass. pretreatment of rice straw by selective extraction of lignin Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2012;109: 2484–2493. from this abundant lignocellulosic biomass material. Of the 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. eight ILs examined, most were demonstrated to be excellent KEYWORDS: cellulose crystallinity; cholinium amino acids pretreatment solvents. Upon pretreatment using these ILs, ionic liquids; delignification; enzymatic hydrolysis; ligno- the initial saccharification rates of rice straw residues were cellulose; pretreatment substan