Hydrolysis of oligosaccharides from distillers grains using organic–inorganic hybrid mesoporous silica catalysts

The use of propylsulfonic acid-functionalized mesoporous silica as a catalyst for the hydrolysis of oligosaccharides released by hydrothermal pretreatment of distiller’s grains was examined in batch reactor studies. The effectiveness of the catalyst system for oligosaccharide hydrolysis was found to improve significantly with increased reaction temperature. This higher temperature operation allowed for more selective recovery of glucose, but was detrimental to arabinose recovery since significant degradation occurred. Xylose recovery efficiency improved with increasing temperature, but the higher temperature led to increased degradation. Using a model feed, solubilized proteins were found to deactivate the organic–inorganic hybrid catalyst, but a simple pretreatment with activated silica was found to alleviate the deactivation.