An integrative approach enables high bioresource utilization and bioethanol production from whole stillage

Abstract

Bioethanol is a major biofuel in industry and mainly produced from corn starch with the dry-mill process. However, one of the remaining challenges is how to economically and efficiently exploit the wasted co-products to further improve ethanol production and generate more valuable chemicals. Here, an integrative approach was developed to efficiently utilize the waste cake for ethanol production, accompanied by protein extraction for feed additives. A high-quality protein feed was produced by the ethanol-alkali extraction method (extraction rate up to 46.91%). Notably, by applying two-step chemoenzymatic strategy, the supernatant and solid recycling yield up to 4.1-, 3.8-, and 154-fold improvements of ethanol, glucose, and xylose production, respectively, comparing to non-pretreatment. Moreover, mass balance analysis found this approach significantly contributed 1.74–4.42% (5.96–15.11 kg/ton dry corn) increase of total ethanol production. The gained knowledge about process design holds the potential transferability for other sustainable biowaste management and bioethanol industry.