abstract
Aiming at increasing the efficiency of transferring corn stover into sugars, a biological pretreatment was
developed and investigated in this study. The protocol was characterized by the pretreatment with crude
ligninolytic enzymes from Phanerochete chrysosporium and Coridus versicolor to break the lignin structure
in corn stover, followed by a washing procedure to eliminate the inhibition of ligninolytic enzyme on cellulase.
By a 2 d-pretreatment, sugar yield from corn stover hydrolysis could be increased by 50.2% (up to
323 mg/g) compared with that of the control. X-ray diffractometry and FT-IR analysis revealed that biological
pretreatment could partially remove the lignin of corn stover, and consequently enhance the enzymatic
hydrolysis efficiency of cellulose and hemeicellulose. In addition, the amount of microbial
inhibitors, such as acetic acid and furfural, were much lower in biological pretreatment than that in acid
pretreatment. This study provided a promising pretreatment method for biotransformation of corn
stovers.