Glucose from corn cobs

The efforts of American chemists in recent years have been devoted largely to the utilization of our waste products...Corn cobs offer a particularly inviting field for research along this line on account of the large supply of cobs available and the variety of substances obtainable from them. One of the leaders in this branch of investigation is Dr. F. B. LaForge of the Chemistry Division of the Bureau of Agriculture, who has contributed numerous papers on the subject. In one of these, in collaboration with C. S. Hudson, he describes, among other things, the preparation of glucose, but recognizes the commercial limitations of the process on account of the cost of the large amount of sulfuric acid used. It was in the hope that the conversion of cellulose to glucose might be accomplished using weaker acid under moderate temperatures and pressures, thus making the process commercially possible, that the present work was undertaken --page 2