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PRETREATMENT AND FRACTIONATION OF CORN STOVER BY AMMONIA RECYCLE PERCOLATION PROCESS. (R831645)
Citation:
Kim, T. H. AND Y. Y. Lee. PRETREATMENT AND FRACTIONATION OF CORN STOVER BY AMMONIA RECYCLE PERCOLATION PROCESS. (R831645). (2005).
Description:
Corn stover was pretreated with aqueous ammonia in a flow-through column reactor,
a process termed as Ammonia Recycle Percolation (ARP). The aqueous ammonia causes
swelling and efficient delignification of biomass at high temperatures. The ARP
process solubilizes about half of xylan, but retains more than 92% of the cellulose
content. Enzymatic digestibility of ARP-treated corn stover is 93% with 10 FPU/g-glucan
enzyme loading. The SEM pictures and FTIR spectra confirm swelling and delignification
effects of the ARP process. The X-ray crystallography data indicate that the
basic crystalline structure of the cellulosic component of corn stover is not
altered by the ARP treatment. Low-liquid ARP can reduce the liquid throughput
and residence time to 3.3 mL/g-biomass and 10–12 min, without adversely
affecting the overall effectiveness. The low-water ARP achieved 73.4% delignification
and 88.5% digestibility with 15 FPU/g-glucan. The ethanol yield from the SSF
of low-liquid ARP-treated corn stover using Saccharomyces cerevisiae reached
84% of the theoretical maximum. Successive operation of a hot-water treatment
and the ARP was applied as a method of biomass fractionation. The two-stage process
separated xylan in the first stage (84%) and lignin in the second stage (75%),
resulting treated solid that contains 79% glucan.
Keywords: Aqueous ammonia; ARP; Corn stover; Pretreatment; Fractionation;
Digestibility; Ethanol; Fermentation