Deacetylation and Disc Refining (DDR) has been proved to be a highly efficient biomass to sugar process. To make it a cost-effective process, sugar yield should be improved by reducing enzyme usage while keeping or reducing the refining energy. In this study, Szego milling was used to improve the sugar yield from the DDR process. The energy consumption and the effects of Szego milling on sugar yield and enzyme loading during enzymatic saccharification of the treated biomass was evaluated. Szego milling effectively improved biomass digestibility while reducing refining energy consumption and enzyme loadings. The Szego milling integrated DDR process increased the monomeric glucose yield to approximately 90% and xylose yield to 84%, respectively, with a total energy consumption of approximately 200kWh/ODMT . SEM imaging revealed that Szego milling caused significant surface disruption and severe maceration and delamination of biomass structure, which could account for the sugar yield enhancement compared to disc refined deacetylated corn stover at fairly low energy consumptions. Our preliminary results show that this Szego-milling integrated DDR process is very promising in biorefinery industry in terms of economic feasibility.

Improving sugar yields and reduce enzyme loadings of DDR (deacetylation and disc refining) process through Szego milling and its techno economic analysis

249th National Meeting (2015)

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