Pretreatment of Corn Stalk by Steam Explosion

A steam explosion pretreatment, which is one of the best ways of pretreating plant stalk, is applied at various severities to corn stalk. It could effectively modify the super-molecular structure of corn stalk and defibrating corn stalk into individual components. The relationship between yield of reducing sugar and the operating conditions, including temperature, pressure of steam explosion pretreatment and acidity, is also established. Experimental results prove that the steam explosion substantially increases the yield of reducing sugar, and the optimal condition for steam explosion is as follows: the pressure is 2.0 MPa, the pressure-retaining time 300 s, the initial acid concentration 1% and the acid treatment time 24 h.