Evaluación de Tratamientos Alcalinos e Hidrotérmicos Asistidos con Microondas para la Obtención de Azúcares a partir de Tallo de Maíz

Abstract

In the present work, in the first measure, a high impact crop residue was selected at the national level, as it is corn, more specifically, the stem, since this represents a large percentage in mass of residue with respect to the grain, which is the product of interest, in addition to this corn is one of the most demand cereals , with a production of 1.2 billion tonnes worldwide according to FAO and 1 ' 069.059 tonnes in Colombia for the specific period of 2010 according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. After physical and chemical characterization including determination of humidity, total solids, ashes, basic organic analysis and determination of soluble and insoluble lignin content, two different pretreatments were assessed, microwave/basic pretreatment and microwave/hydrothermal pretreatment, 16 trials were developed under different conditions for alkaline pretreatment and 9 for hydrothermal pretreatment, for a total of 25 trials , it was determined which of the treatments has greater yield in the extraction of hydrolyzable sugars of hemicellulose and cellulose as raw material by means of the quantification of the same by HPLC. Among the results obtained, it was determined that Colombia ceases to take advantage of 21,417.2535 TJ/year from crop residues of corn sowing, whose final disposition is usually its burning.