Corn stalks as a lignocellulose substrate for biorefinery applications

We combined cold plasma treatment (CPT) with water, ethanol, Fenton and hydrogen peroxide media under acidic and basic conditions for treatment of corn stalks as significant lignocellulose agri-industrial waste. Chemical properties of treated samples were analyzed by FTIR and mercury porosimetry, acetyl bromide soluble lignin content was determined by spectrophotometric methods, while carbohydrate fractions were subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis followed by spectrophotometric analysis to assess its potential for fermentations. Lignin fraction which is often neglected (Ponnusamy et al., 2019) was also examined as a source of antioxidants