(recycle newsprint and recycle newsprint mill sludge) was investigated. Pretreatment was

done by aqueous ammonia and by sodium hydroxide with  or without supplementation of anthraquinone.  In all cases there was a substantial degree of delignification ranging from 20 to 50%. After pretreatment, 90-95% of the cellulose and 50-80% of hemicellulose were retained in the solid.  Under this scheme, both cellulose and hemicellulose are enzymatically hydrolyzed to respective sugars. This is a significant economic benefit since it eliminates the need of detoxification of hemicellulose sugars this is required in non-alkaline pretreatments. For treated recycle newsprint mill sludge, the overall enzymatic digestibility was in the vicinity of 70% with 15 FPU/g-glucan loading of Spezyme CP. With newsprint feedstocks, the digestibilities were lower than that of treated sludge. In order to achieve higher enzymatic digestibility of cellulose and hemicellulose, external xylanase was supplemented. Xylanase supplementation increased not only the digestibility of hemicellulose but also the digestibility of cellulose. With xylanase addition, the overall sugar yield has increased by 10% to 20%. Both treated feedsotcks were tested as substrates for production of ethanol through fermentation using the cellulase and two different microorganisms -Recombinant E. coli KO-11 (SSCF) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, NRE- D₅A (SSF). The fermentation process proceeded in a normal pattern without any major difficulty. The ethanol yields based on glucan were in the range of 70-80% of the theoretical maximum.