ABSTRACT
Anaerobic digestion (AD) is an effective way to utilize the abundant resource of corn stover (CS). In this light, Ca(OH)2 pretreatment alone, steam explosion (SE) pretreatment alone, and co-pretreatment of Ca(OH)2 and SE were applied to improve the digestion efficiency of CS. Results showed that AD of co-pretreated CS with 1.0% Ca(OH)2 and SE at 1.5 MPa achieved the highest cumulative methane yield of , which was 61.54% significantly higher (p < .01) than untreated CS. The biodegradability value of CS after co-pretreatment enhanced from 43.03% to 69.52%. Methane yield could be well fitted by the first-order model and the modified Gompertz model. In addition, composition and structural changes of CS after pretreatment were analyzed by a fiber analyzer, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction. The validated results indicated that co-pretreatment of Ca(OH)2 and SE was efficient to improve the digestion performance of CS and might be a suitable method for agricultural waste pretreatment in the future AD industry.
ORCiD
Jinli Ji http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5686-7453
Liutianyi Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9961-2207
Yanfeng He http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7134-3567
Ruihong Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2719-0943