Research evaluating the impact of alkali pretreatment of rape straw on the effectiveness of enzymatic hydrolysis of polysaccharides was carried out. The experiments were planned using Statistica program – a Box-Behnken design. The pretreatment conditions tested were: temperature 60–80ºC, reaction time 2–8 h and alkali (NaOH or Ca(OH)₂) proportion 0,05–0,2 g ⋅ g^-1 d.m. of substrate. The effectiveness of the used methods was evaluated on the basis of the amount of reducing sugars released during subsequent 48-hour enzymatic hydrolysis. The optimization conducted based on reducing sugars concentration indicated the following pretreatment conditions: NaOH in the proportion 0,15 g ⋅ g^-1 d.m. of substrate, temperature 72ºC, time 6,6 h and Ca(OH)₂ in the proportion 0,141 g ⋅ g^-1 d.m. of substrate, temperature 74^oC, time 3,2 h, which allowed to obtain reducing sugars concentration in hydrolysates 30,4 and 27,7 g ⋅ dm^-3, respectively.

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