This study shows that corn and cobs ground through the
same screen size using a hammermill will exhibit different
grinding behavior, and the resultant ground feedstocks will
exhibit different physical and flow characteristics.
Additionally, for comparable moisture contents within the
range of 10% to 20%, corncobs require higher motor power
for the hammermill to obtain the same amount of grinding
throughput as corn kernels. These results give an insight
into several significant changes that would need to be made
in the material handling and processing systems of existing
corn-to-ethanol facilities in order to successfully convert to
the production of lignocellulosic ethanol from corncobs.