(503g) Corn Stover: Understanding the Impact of Anatomical Heterogeneity on Bioprocessing

Corn stover, the crop residue from harvesting field corn, is an abundant biomass resource that has been widely researched as a potential feedstock for bioproducts. Yet, it is unclear how the inherent heterogeneity present in this biomass impacts processing. To date, corn stover is treated as a homogenous feedstock. Anatomically, a corn stover plant consists of multiple parts that specialize in unique roles for plant survivability, each composed of different tissue type and structure. These differences pose challenges to bioprocessing such as handling and sugar recovery. Quantifying these differences will provide a fundamental understanding in corn stover biorefining that will result in new processing strategies to exploit anatomical heterogeneity for improved biorefining performance and better selectivity for targeted products. In this study, we identified six distinct anatomical components: stalk-rind, stalk-pith, cob, sheath, leaf, and husk. These components were manually separated, subjected to multiple pretreatment conditions, and characterized. Early results showed differences in chemical composition, bulk physical properties, and water sorption behavior, resulting in different pretreatment response and enzymatic hydrolysis with each fraction. This work explores the relationship between anatomical fraction and water sorption properties to understand processing limitations and enzyme accessibility. These results coupled with mass balance and techno-economic analysis will be instrumental to understanding the economic benefits and viability of biorefining preferentially rich, anatomical fractions.