Fungal treatment of cornstalks enhances the delignification and xylan loss during mild alkaline pretreatment and enzymatic digestibility of glucan

Fungal treatment with Irpex lacteus was used to enhance the delignification and xylan loss during mild alkaline pretreatment and subsequent enzymatic conversion in this research. The 15-day bio-treatment can modify the lignin structure and increase losses of lignin (from 75.67% to 80.00%) and xylan (from 40.68% to 51.37%) during alkaline pretreatment, making the enzymatic conversion more efficient. The high digestibility of glucan can be obtained after the bio-treatment and alkaline pretreatment at near room-temperature (30 °C), and the maximum digestibility increased 14% in comparison with that after the sole alkaline pretreatment. The bio-treatment enhanced delignification and glucan digestibility more significantly when the alkaline pretreatment was performed at lower severity. Additionally, Nuclei Growth model with a time-dependent rate constant can describe well the delignification and xylan loss. Results indicated that the bio-treatment increased the rate constant of initial reaction, but accelerated the decline of rate constant during alkaline pretreatment.