Impact of dilute acid pretreatment conditions on p-coumarate removal in diverse maize lines

Prior work has identified that lignins recovered from dilute acid-pretreated corn stover exhibit superior performance in phenol–formaldehyde resins used in wood adhesive applications when compared to diverse process-modified lignins derived from other sources. This improved performance is hypothesized to be due to the higher content of unsubstituted phenolic groups specifically p-coumarate lignin esters. In this work, a diverse set of corn stover samples are employed that exhibit diversity in p-coumarate content and total lignin content to explore the relationship between dilute acid pretreatment conditions, p-coumarate ester hydrolysis, xylan solubilization, and the resulting glucose enzymatic hydrolysis yields. The goal of this study is to identify pretreatment conditions that preserve a significant fraction of the p-coumarate esters while simultaneously achieving high enzymatic hydrolysis yields. Kinetic parameters for p-coumarate ester hydrolysis were quantified and pretreatment-biomass combinations were identified that result in glucose hydrolysis yields of more than 90% while retaining nearly 50 mg p-coumarate/g lignin.