Thermochemical pretreatments of maize stem for sugar recovery: Comparative evaluation of microwave and conventional heating

Microwave (MW) heating is attracting great attention in biorefinery processes, because of its special dipole rotation mechanism. In the current study, MW and conventional methods were employed to assist thermochemical pretreatments (H2O, H2SO4 or NaOH) maize stem biomass. Their influences on sugar release biomass compositions during comparably evaluated. Compared pretreatment, are highly efficient recovery, contributing 4.3 times higher amount (1.25 vs 0.30 μmol/mg biomass) with reaction time 8 shorter (5 40 min) selectively producing glucose as major constituent (0.75 using 0.2 M pretreatment media. also effectively removed lignin (up 91.6 %) within 5 min, which was significantly than (51.2 %). Conventional successfully hemicellulose converted crystalline cellulose into amorphous cellulose, probably due longer time. Rapid efficiently fractionated content while keeping structure. led similar digestibility solid residues. Overall, represents an energy alternative strategy, it consumed 25–34 folds less for effective fractionation value-added chemical production.