High solids all-inclusive polysaccharide hydrolysis of steam-exploded corn pericarp by periodic peristalsis

Abstract

A new sequence of steam explosion (SE) with periodic peristalsis (PP) exploited to fractionate corn pericarp (CP), and its high solid cellulosic hydrolysis to increase sugar yield. In this investigation, the optimum SE-condition was 0.8 MPa/5 min., recovered around 12.62 % total sugars than untreated CP, whereas glucan and xylan digestibility reached around 97 % and 87 %, respectively. Besides that, the unground SECP conversion increased by 27.10 % glucan and 34.18 % xylan than the ground one. FE-SEM, FTIR, XRD results confirmed that SE significantly fractionated the amorphous substances that driven the increment of the crystallinity index. SE changed the functional groups without altering the lignin, and also the formation of degradations products was negligible and not detrimental to sugars conversion. An unpolluted SEPP enzymatic hydrolysis system at high solid loading (25 %) with compatible low cellulase dose (15 FPU g−1 solids) was beneficial to intensified sugars conversion.