A novel cleaning process for industrial production of xylose in pilot scale from corncob by using...

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 °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 °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.