Enzyme catalyzed disassembly of corn kernels

Our work addresses the goal of developing new uses for corn and relating it to ethanol industry. The research focus on an enzyme-based processing that deconstructs the kernel into its base components of starch, pericarp, germ (and oil), and sugars, and then transforms the sugars into value-added molecules using catalytic processing.  High-value chemicals that can be produced from corn-derived sugars include furans, levulinic acid, biohydrocarbons, succinic acid and sugar alcohols.  These add significant value through product diversification. By the optimization of conditions for the combined use of commercial protease with cellulase, we have enabled close to 90% recovery of the starch found in a corn kernel in a particulate form after 36 hours of incubation. A cone-bottoned bioreactor was used to scale-up the production of particulate starch at temperatures that do not exceed 50°C. While formation of some sugars still occurs, the resulting glucose may be readily fermented to ethanol in an existing fermentation processes typical of a corn dry mill facility, while the starch is recovered by centrifugation of filtration. Conditions for the proposed enzyme based disassembly process are compatible with a corn dry mill.