Arabinoxylan is one of the potential key products of a wheat bran based biorefinery. To develop a suit-able process for the isolation of arabinoxylans, the effect of different processing approaches needs to bedetermined. In this work, chemical analysis was supplemented by immunolocalization of arabinoxylan byconfocal microscopy, which proved valuable in the assessment of cell-structural changes occurring upondifferent chemical and mechanical bran treatments. The influences of acid, lye and hydrogen peroxidetreatment, ball-milling, extrusion, fermentation and treatment with esterase, xylanase and a combinationthereof were investigated.Extensive ball-milling showed the best selectivity for harvesting arabinoxylan. Chemical treatmentsgave the highest yields, but did so at the cost of selectivity. Fermentative and enzymatic treatments werehampered by coextraction of other compounds.