Supercritical carbon dioxide microemulsions are great medium to combine two immiscible substances through forming nanoscale polar cores in nonpolar continuous phase with the help of proper surfactants. The properties of microemulsions could be significantly affected by their constituents and structures. In this work, molecular dynamics simulation was implemented to study supercritical carbon dioxide microemulsions containing ionic liquid [bmim][PF6] and water by adding surfactant Ls-36. Results showed that the above components could form spherical aggregates in CO2 bulk phase with [bmim][PF6] and some water as the inner core, surfactant headgroups and water as the intermediate shell, and surfactant tails as the outer shell. The microstructure information about the outer shell was further investigated by defining an angle between the surfactant tail and the normal direction of the aggregate outer surface, which ranged from 78° to 125°. The influence of the ionic liquid content on the size and structure of microemulsions was explored and the best molar ratio between the ionic liquid and surfactant was around 1.25 for getting maximum water solubility.
Various agricultural crop residues including corn stover,corn cob,and sorghum stalk with a moisture content of 75 wt%were subjected to a long pretreatment(12–60 h)with supercritical CO_2(scCO_2),at low temperature(50–80°C)and a pressure of 17.5–25.0 MPa.The sugar yields from the enzymatic hydrolysis(EH)of the pretreated samples were as much as three-to fourfold greater than those afforded by the raw materials.However,when pretreatment was conducted within a short time(e.g.0.5 h),as previously reported in the literature,only a slight increase in the EH sugar yields was observed.The proposed sc CO_2pretreatment mechanism demonstrated the role of moisture in the system.Wetting,softening,and swelling were observed to mainly affect the lignocellulose when a suitable amount of water was added.Finally,the samples were analysed by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy,before and after pretreatment,to investigate the changes in the microscopic structure of the biomass.
