A novel cleaning process for industrial production of xylose in pilot scale from corncob by using screw-steam-explosive extruder

作者:Zhang, Hong-Jia; Fan, Xiao-Guang; Qiu, Xue-Liang; Zhang, Qiu-Xiang; Wang, Wen-Ya*; Li, Shuang-Xi; Deng, Li-Hong; Koffas, Mattheos A. G.; Wei, Dong-Sheng; Yuan, Qi-Peng
来源:Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, 2014, 37(12): 2425-2436.
DOI:10.1007/s00449-014-1219-0

摘要

Steam explosion is the most promising technology to replace conventional acid hydrolysis of lignocellulose for biomass pretreatment. In this paper, a new screw-steam-explosive extruder was designed and explored for xylose production and lignocellulose biorefinery at the pilot scale. We investigated the effect of different chemicals on xylose yield in the screw-steam-explosive extrusion process, and the xylose production process was optimized as followings: After pre-impregnation with sulfuric acid at 80 A degrees C for 3 h, corncob was treated at 1.55 MPa with 9 mg sulfuric acid/g dry corncob (DC) for 5.5 min, followed by countercurrent extraction (3 recycles), decoloration (activated carbon dosage 0.07 g/g sugar, 75 A degrees C for 40 min), and ion exchange (2 batches). Using this process, 3.575 kg of crystal xylose was produced from 22 kg corncob, almost 90 % of hemicellulose was released as monomeric sugar, and only a small amount of by-products was released (formic acid, acetic acid, fural, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, and phenolic compounds were 0.17, 1.14, 0.53, 0.19, and 1.75 g/100 g DC, respectively). All results indicated that the screw-steam-explosive extrusion provides a more effective way to convert hemicellulose into xylose and could be an alternative method to traditional sulfuric acid hydrolysis process for lignocellulose biorefinery.