The Effect of Pretreatment with Ethanol–Water Mixed Solvent on the Dissolution of Corn Cob Components

Research on the treatment of biomass using organic solvent fractionation technology has made significant progress, but the dissolution behavior of the three components (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) during pretreatment has not yet been systematically summarized. In this study, corn cob was used as the raw material, and the full range of ethanol/water pretreatment system was employed to systematically investigate the effect of solvent ratio on the dissolution of the three components under self-catalytic conditions and different process conditions such as reaction temperature, time, and solid–liquid ratio. Furthermore, XRD, FTIR and solid-state UV were used to analyze the structural changes of the components during the dissolution process. Based on these, the alternating extraction of water and ethanol on the raw material and solid residue were used to infer the effect of ethanol and water in the pre-treatment. The results showed that the increase in ethanol ratio could inhibit the dissolution of polysaccharides but promote the removal of lignin, which were consistent with the existing conclusions.Based on the extraction results, we speculated that water was the key factor in breaking the connection bonds between hemicellulose and lignin and promoting the dissolution of hemicellulose; ethanol was responsible for the dissolution of lignin, but the bond breaking still required the participation of water. This extraction method provided a new idea for revealing the mechanism of action of the solvent in the pre-treatment of organic solvents and provided data support for the separation of the three components in biomass. Graphical The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.