Tuesday, April 20, 2010
LL Conference Facility (Hilton Clearwater Beach)
Corn Fiber is a co-product of the corn wet-milling process that holds potential to become a value-added product. A process was developed to fractionate and isolate the hemicellulose B component of corn fiber. The process consisted of SAA pretreatment followed by cellulose hydrolysis, during which the Hemi-B was solublized by cleavage into xylo-oligosaccharides. The hemicellulose A and B fractions were separated by adjustment of pH, and the hemi-B recovered by precipitation with ethanol. The hemi-B was then hydrolyzed by a cocktail of enzymes that consisted of pectinase, xylanase, and ferulic acid esterase. Used by itself, the xylanase was very ineffective, demonstrating yields of less than 2% of xylose and arabinose. Pectinase alone exhibited xylose and arabinose yields of 34.49% and 47.20%, respectively. The addition of ferulic acid esterase to the pectinase increased the yields to 44.44% of xylose and 52.89% of arabinose. Addition of xylanase to this mixture had no meaningful effect, increasing xylose yield by 0.03% while decreasing arabinose yield by 0.44%. Attempts to further characterize individual enzyme performance and to improve this yield are in progress, as is the completion of a mass balance around the process. These results will be discussed.