Rheological Properties of Steam-Exploded Corn Straw Slurry and Enzyme Hydrolysate

• Main Authors: Xia Zhang, Hongwei Li, Xiaohang Feng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. 2017-07-01
• Series: Chemical Engineering Transactions
• Online Access: https://www.cetjournal.it/index.php/cet/article/view/1113

In order to reveal the rheological properties of corn straw slurry and enzyme hydrolysate, this paper employs rotary viscometer, pre-treats the corn straw via steam explosion, and examines the slurry rheological behavior based on insoluble substrate concentration. The results are shown that the corn straw slurry exhibits shear- thinning, the power law model is suitable to describe the behaviors for corn straw slurry, and the regression coefficients exceed 0.98 in all cases. The apparent viscosity decreases with the increase in temperature, the data of experiment for that is described by Arrhenius equation with regression coefficients exceeding 0.94 at different substrate concentrations. And then the apparent viscosity grows with the solid concentration, which is accompanied by a decrease in the amount of free water. The time-dependent characteristic for corn straw slurry is obvious at different shear rates due to fiber suspension. The sugar concentration of enzyme hydrolysate rises at different substrate concentrations, and the apparent viscosity keeps falling throughout the enzyme hydrolysis process.