Sonophotocatalysis for enhanced extraction of corn cob xylan and simultaneous production of Xylose and Xylooligosaccharides

Abstract

Abstract This study aims at evaluating the synergistic effect of Sonophotocatalysis (SP) for enhanced extraction of corncob xylan. The effect of different pretreatment methods namely Sonocatalysis (US+ZnO), Photocatalysis (PC), Ultrasonication at 20 % amplitude (US 20) and Sonophotocatalysis at amplitude of 20% (SP 20) were studied. Amongst, SP 20 resulted in two folds and five folds enhanced xylan extraction compared to US 20 and PC, respectively. Further, the results from the studies performed with varying sonication amplitude and extraction about 90.1±1.8 % of CCB xylan could be extracted within 15 min with SP 90. This reaction condition resulted in 14.59±1 % of xylose and 84.5±2.01 % of total XOS relative to the initial xylan content. From our study it was evident that combination of US and PC resulted in enhanced extraction of CCB xylan with reduced time and mild reaction condition without the use of additional chemicals. Further the extracted xylan was simultaneously hydrolyzed into xylose and XOS of DP (2-4) i.e X2, X3 and X4. The present study showed that SP could be a promising method for one pot production of XOS and xylose from CCB xylan.