High-concentration sugars production from corn stover based on combined pretreatments and fed-batch process

In this paper, high-concentration sugars were produced from pretreated corn stover. The raw corn stover was pretreated in a process combining steam explosion and alkaline hydrogen-peroxide. The hemicellulose and lignin were removed greatly. The cellulose content increased to 73.2%. Fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis was initiated with 12% (w/v) solids loading and 20 FPU/g solids. Then, 6% solids were fed consecutively at 12, 36 and 60 h. After 144 h, the final concentrations of reducing sugar, glucose, cellobiose and xylose reached 220, 175, 22 and 20 g/L, respectively. The final total biomass conversion was 60% in fed-batch process.