Brazil is the largest world producer and consumer of coconut water with approximately two billion fruits, where 70% is for water production. Therefore, a large amount of waste is generated: the coir husk, which represents approximately 1.75 kg per fruit unit. This biomass presents 35% cellulose in its composition, which makes the coir husk a good option for the raw material for second-generation (2 G) ethanol production. In this study, the coir husk was chemically pretreated using four different treatments. The 2 G ethanol production was studied considering two different processes, using separated hydrolysis and fermentation (SHF) or simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF). The pretreatment used a solution containing sodium chlorite at 10% of the acetic acid and the SSF process was the better method for 2 G ethanol production from coir husk, yielding 52.7 L ethanol/ton of biomass. Thus, the coir husk can be considered an alternative for the production of 2 G ethanol, with all the environmental and social advantages of such an approach, such as occupying precious space in the landfills and taking 12 years to decompose.

巴西是世界上最大的椰子水生产国和消费国，拥有约20亿个水果，其中70％用于生产水。因此，会产生大量废物：椰壳，每个果皮约占1.75公斤。这种生物质的组成中含有35％的纤维素，这使椰壳成为第二代（2 G）乙醇生产原料的不错选择。在这项研究中，椰壳采用四种不同的化学处理方法进行了预处理。研究了使用分离的水解和发酵（SHF）或同时糖化和发酵（SSF）的两个不同过程对2 G乙醇的生产进行了研究。预处理使用的是含10％乙酸的亚氯酸钠溶液，SSF工艺是从椰壳生产2 G乙醇的较好方法，每吨生物质可产生52.7 L乙醇。因此，椰壳可以被认为是生产2 G乙醇的替代方法，具有这种方法的所有环境和社会优势，例如在垃圾填埋场中占据宝贵的空间并需要12年的时间才能分解。