Agave bagasse (AG) is a potential bioenergy feedstock due to its high biomass productivity, even in semiarid lands. In particular, ionic liquid (IL) pretreatment using aprotic ILs (AILs) has greatly reduced AG recalcitrance towards downstream processing by lowering lignin content and achieving high sugar yields. However, AIL's low biocompatibility towards enzymes and bacteria combined with the high initial cost has limited further development of this technology. In a wash-free one-pot (OP) ethanol conversion process, the evaluation of AG pretreatment with a biocompatible low-cost protic IL (PIL), 2-hydroxyethylammonium acetate ([2-HEA][OAc]) was achieved, where PIL pretreatment was followed by enzymatic saccharification, then ethanol fermentation in a single vessel. The pretreatment conditions were optimized using a central composite design to enable high sugar conversion at low PIL content. Under optimized pretreatment conditions (160 °C, 60% IL loading and 1.5 h), a yield of 132 kg of ethanol per Ton of untreated biomass was estimated using high solids loading (30% solids loading) under a PIL-OP scheme. High lignin removal (>50%), a decreased cellulose crystallinity, and high glucan conversion (>85%) were achieved with PIL-pretreated AG comparable to yields obtained in an AIL-AG pretreated sample using 1-ethyl-3-methyl-imidazolium acetate ([C2C1Im][OAc]). These results using [2-HEA][OAc] demonstrate the potential of AG in an OP scheme with improved total ethanol yields paving the way towards a more feasible IL-based biorefinery.

A pilot-scale continuous tubular reactor (PCTR) was employed for the isothermal pretreatment of agave bagasse (AG), corn stover (CS), sugarcane bagasse (SC), and wheat straw (WS) with three residence times. The objective was to evaluate the impact of this technology on enzymatic saccharification at low solid loadings (4% w/v) and on sequential saccharification and glucose fermentation (SSF) at high solid loading (20% w/v) for bioethanol production. Deformation in cellulose and hemicellulose linkages and xylan removal of up to 60% were achieved after pretreatment. The shortest residence time tested (20 min) resulted in the highest glucan to glucose conversion in the low solid loading (4% w/v) enzymatic saccharification step for AG (83.3%), WS (82.8%), CS (76.1%) and SC (51.8%). Final ethanol concentrations after SSF from PCTR-pretreated biomass were in the range of 38 to 42 g L^-1 (11.0-11.3 kg of ethanol per 100 kg of untreated biomass). Additionally, PCTR performance in terms of xylan removal and sugar release were compared with those from a batch lab-scale autohydrolysis reactor (BLR) under the same process conditions. BLR removed higher xylan amounts than those achieved in the PCTR. However, higher sugar concentrations were obtained with PCTR for SC (13.2 g L^-1 vs. 10.5 g L^-1) and WS (21.7 g L^-1 vs. 18.8 g L^-1), whilst differences were not significant (p < 0.05) with BLR for AG (16.0 g L^-1 vs. 16.3 g L^-1) and CS (18.7 g L^-1 vs. 18.4 g L^-1).

Particle physics has an ambitious and broad experimental programme for the coming decades. This programme requires large investments in detector hardware, either to build new facilities and experiments, or to upgrade existing ones. Similarly, it requires commensurate investment in the R&D of software to acquire, manage, process, and analyse the shear amounts of data to be recorded. In planning for the HL-LHC in particular, it is critical that all of the collaborating stakeholders agree on the software goals and priorities, and that the efforts complement each other. In this spirit, this white paper describes the R&D activities required to prepare for this software upgrade.