Rational approach to optimize cellulase mixtures for hydrolysis of regenerated cellulose containing residual ionic liquid.

For the efficient production of glucose for platform chemicals or biofuels, cellulosic biomass is pretreated and subsequently hydrolyzed with cellulases. Although ionic liquids (IL) are known to effectively pretreat cellulosic biomass, the hydrolysis of IL pretreated biomass has not been optimized so far. Here, we present a semi-empirical model to rationally optimize the hydrolysis of pretreated α-cellulose - regenerated from IL and containing residual IL from the pretreatment.