This study presents the influence of different dual salts on the pretreatment of sugarcane bagasse (SCB) with H2O2 for the production of bioethanol. The results showed better cellulose recovery and delignification for MnSO4 center dot H2O and ZnO system. At optimized conditions (1% H2O2, 1 g SCB, 30 min, 100 degrees C and 0.5:100g/mL), the maximum cellulose recovery of 93.42 +/- 1.74%, and delignification of 74.18 +/- 1.51% were obtained. The SCB was subjected to dilute acid hydrolysis, and under optimized conditions, the maximum glucose, xylose and arabinose concentrations obtained were 15.26 +/- 0.37 g/L, 11.62 +/- 0.21 g/L and 3.58 +/- 0.17 g/L, respectively. The results of SEM, FTIR and XRD analysis suggested that the proposed method effectively removed lignin and disrupted the crystal structure of cellulose for a better hydrolytic process. The fermentation of hydrolyzate with Saccharomyces cerevisiae showed maximum bioethanol production of 13.1 g/L at the end of 72 h and bioethanol yield of 0.184 g/g SCB. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.