LAUSR

Pretreatment has been widely used to improve the anaerobic digestion (AD) efficiency of cellulosic substrate. However, intrinsic shortcomings of traditional pretreatment techniques limit their industrial application. In this study, a solid-state alkaline pretreatment with KOH to improve the AD efficiency of corn straw was developed, which could largely decrease the chemical needed during pretreatment. In addition, it could be done during the feedstock storage without the need of liquid/solid separation before AD. Furthermore, the potassium added during pretreatment could be preserved in AD digestate, which could benefit its utilization as fertilizer. Results showed the solid-state KOH pretreatment significantly improved the methane yield and AD efficiency that depended on KOH loading. Under 8% KOH load, the maximum methane yield was obtained, which was 31.9% higher than the original corn straw. Structural analysis showed the intact structures (especially lignin) of corn straw were partly destroyed during ...