4. Conclusion
A combinational process of enzymatic hydrolysis and catalytic hydrogenolysis for short-chain polyols production from corn stover was developed in this study. The results show that the production cost of stover sugars via enzymatic hydrolysis was competitive to the corn based glucose. The purification processes used for corn-based glucose worked well with stover sugars and the short-chain polyols yield from hydrogenolysis of stover sugars was comparable to that of the corn-based glucose. The present study provided an important prototype for polyols production from lignocellulose to replace the petroleum- or corn-based polyols for future industrial applications.