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Published on: October 24, 2016
A comprehensive biorefinery process for valorising brewers' spent grains using conventional and deep eutectic
David Nkurunziza1, Tara Pukala2, Vincent Bulone3
1School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Adelaide University, Glen Osmond, South Australia 5064, Australia.
Abstract:
A holistic biorefinery concept integrating cell wall deconstruction, downstream separation and purification steps to convert brewers' spent grains (BSG) into high-value fractions was developed using alkali and deep eutectic solvents. Protein and arabinoxylan yields significantly increased with ultrasound (US) pretreatment, reaching 21% and 27% (w/w) of starting dry BSG, respectively. Protein purity reached 67% with 58% recovery efficiency, and arabinoxylans achieved 90% purity with 94% recovery efficiency using conventional sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Furthermore, the branched structure of arabinoxylans was preserved in NaOH biorefining with an arabinose/xylose ratio > 0.4. However, choline chloride maleic acid (CCM) selectively cleaved side-chain acyl substitutions, identified in phenolic fractions as 5-O-trans-p-coumaroyl-l-arabinofuranose and 5-O-trans-p-feruloyl-l-arabinofuranose. Consequently, linear monodispersed xylopyranose homopolymers and low molecular weight xylo-oligosaccharides were produced with higher phenolic yield than conventional biorefining. Holistic biorefinery concepts demonstrated the potential to extensively valorise BSG into a cascade of high-value products, promoting circular bio-economy principles through waste-to-value conversion.
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