Open Access

ARTICLE

Comparison of Dilute Organic Acid Pretreatment and a Comprehensive Exploration of Citric Acid Pretreatment on Corn Cob

Hui Qiao¹, Jingzhao Cui¹, Shuiping Ouyang¹, Jinjie Shi², Jia Ouyang^1,3,*

1 College of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China.
2 College of Forestry, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing,210037, China.
3 Key Laboratory of Forest Genetics and Biotechnology of the Ministry of Education, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, China.

* Corresponding Author: Jia Ouyang. Email: .

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Renewable Polymer Materials and Their Application)

Journal of Renewable Materials 2019, 7(11), 1197-1207. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2019.07735

Abstract

As an important agricultural waste, corn cob is one of the most abundant lignocellulosic biomass. In this work, dilute acid pretreatment using seven different organic acids were compared for compositional analysis of corn cob. The first pKa of organic acids, influenced by the number and type of the side group and distance between two carboxylic groups, played a crucial role in the pretreatment effect. Citric acid was found to have better pretreatment performance than other tested dicarboxylic acids. Under the condition of 30 mM, 160°C and 60 min, the level of xylose reached 22.64 g/L in pretreatment liquid, and the pretreated corn cob demonstrated the high enhancement of enzymatic hydrolysis up to 93.4% and the ethanol yield was 73.6%.

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