Ethanol production from wet oxidized corn straw by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation

In order to find out the appropriate process for ethanol production from corn straw, alkaline wet-oxidation pretreatment (195°C, 15 min, Na2CO3 2 g/L, O2 1200 kPa) and simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) were adopted to produce ethanol. The results showed that 90% of cellulose remained in the solid fraction and recovery of cellulose was 95.87% after pretreatment. After 24 h hydrolysis at 50°C using cellulase, the achieved conversion of cellulose to glucose was about 67.6%. After 142 h of SSF with substrate concentration of 8%, ethanol yield of 79.0% of the theoretical was obtained. The estimated total ethanol production was 262.7 kg/t raw material by assuming the consumption of both C-6 and C-5. No obvious inhibition effect occurred during SSF. These offered experiment evidences for ethanol production from corn straw.