Production of cellulosic ethanol and value-added products from corn fiber

Corn fiber, a by-product from the corn processing industry, mainly composed of residual starch, cellulose, and hemicelluloses, is a promising raw material for producing cellulosic ethanol and value-added products due to its abundant reserves and low costs of collection and transportation. Now, several technologies for the production of cellulosic ethanol from corn fiber have been reported, such as the D3MAX process, Cellerate (TM) process, etc., and part of the technologies have also been used in industrial production in the United States. The ethanol yields range from 64 to 91% of the theoretical maximum, depending on different production processes. Because of the multicomponent of corn fiber and the complex structures highly substituted by a variety of side chains in hemicelluloses of corn fiber, however, there are many challenges in cellulosic ethanol production from corn fiber, such as the low conversion of hemicelluloses to fermentable sugars in enzymatic hydrolysis, high production of inhibitors during pretreatment, etc. Some technologies, including an effective pretreatment process for minimizing inhibitors production and maximizing fermentable sugars recovery, production of enzyme preparations with suitable protein compositions, and the engineering of microorganisms capable of fermenting hexose and pentose in hydrolysates and inhibitors tolerance, etc., need to be further developed. The process integration of cellulosic ethanol and value-added products also needs to be developed to improve the economic benefits of the whole process. This review summarizes the status and progresses of cellulosic ethanol production and potential value-added products from corn fiber and presents some challenges in this field at present.