Lignocellulosic biomass biorefineries allow, in principle, the sustainable processing of biomass to obtain a wide spectrum of marketable products and bioenergy. However, a potential limitation within these processes is the water footprint. The bagasse of Agave tequilana Weber (AB) is an agro-industrial waste with a high potential to be used in a biorefinery, due to the fact that large quantities are discarded and its chemical composition (amorphous cellulose and microcellulose, hemicellulose and lignin). Therefore, the objective was to evaluate the amount of water used to obtain microcellulose from AB through a sequential process within the biorefinery concept. The sequential process consists of three treatments: 1) hydrothermal treatment; 2) deslignification using p-TsOH; 3) with further enzymatic hydrolysis. The liquids obtained from treatments 1 and 3 were used to produce methane. For the quantification of the volume of water used and discarded, the amount of water used in each treatment was considered, as well as that of the washings carried out on the solid fraction. Based on the results obtained, the recovery efficiency of microcellulose from AB was 29.4%, with a CI of 66.7%. In total, 20.3 L of water were used, of which ~58% was used to produce methane (549 N-L CH4/Kg AB), 14% to recovery lignin and ~25% is waste water (50% with sugars and 50% contains p-TsOH, that can be recovered). Therefore, this process is promising because most of the water is used to obtain energy and value-added by-products, and the residual water wouldn’t have a severe environmental impact.

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