Agradecimentos: The authors acknowledge the financial support from the São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP (grant numbers: 2016/10450-1, 2015/20630-4, 2015/14042-2, and 2016/06142-0), from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPq (Grant number 304944/2018-1), from the Coordination of Superior Level Staff Improvement – CAPES (Finance Code 001). The authors are also grateful for the support from the Brazilian Biorenewables National Laboratory (LNBR/CNPEM) in calculating sugarcane and sugarcane straw costs using the Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery (VSB) platform Ver menos

Abstract: The increasing demand for renewable energy, fuels, and chemicals encourages the development of new biorefinery processes. This work presents a techno-economic analysis of the pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse using the protic ionic liquid 2-hydroxyethylammonium acetate ([MEA][OAc]) considering four washing methods to remove it from the pretreated pulp. In the best scenario, the increased enzymatic hydrolysis yield and the more efficient counter-current washing method contributed to an increased ethanol yield of 33 %. Despite the lower increment in ethanol yield compared with other second-generation processes, the production of technical lignin increased the reaction mass efficiency of the biorefinery by 5.6 % and led to an internal rate of return two percentage points higher. However, wastewater and vinasse production increased by 26 % and 50 %, respectively. These results indicate that protic ionic liquids are potentially good pretreatment agents to produce fuels and chemicals from biomass, thus underpinning the establishment of new biorefinery processes Ver menos