Mechanical treatment of maize stem by ball milling before enzymatic saccharification

What is it about?

Lignocellulose is composed of three main components, cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Enzymatic hydrolysis of the carbohydrates in lignocellulose is inefficient without pretreatment that improve enzymatic hydrolysis yields. However, the reason(s) behind the positive impact of hydrothermal or thermochemical pretreatments is not completely understood. In this study, mechanical treatment of maize stem material was carried out to disintegrate its main components before enzymatic hydrolysis.

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Why is it important?

Thioacidolysis of ball-milled samples before enzymatic hydrolysis gave artificially low yield of lignin monomers. However, normal yield of thioacidolysis monomers was obtained after enzymatic hydrolysis. 4 h milling time was enough to maximize hydrolysis yield (~88%) from the ball-milled materials. Incomplete hydrolysis of carbohydrates with up to 12 milling appeared to be a result of interference from non-condensed lignin remaining in contact with cellulose and associated with arabinoxylans.