Compositional analysis of water-soluble materials in corn stover.

Corn stover is one of the leading feedstock candidates for commodity-scale biomass-to-ethanol processing. The composition of water-soluble materials in corn stover has been determined with greater than 90% mass closure in four of five representative samples. The mass percentage of water-soluble materials in tested stover samples varied from 14 to 27% on a dry weight basis. Over 30 previously unknown constituents of aqueous extracts were identified and quantified using a variety of chromatographic techniques. Monomeric sugars (primarily glucose and fructose) were found to be the predominant water-soluble components of corn stover, accounting for 30-46% of the dry weight of extractives (4-12% of the dry weight of feedstocks). Additional constituents contributing to the mass balance for extractives included various alditols (3-7%), aliphatic acids (7-21%), inorganic ions (10-18%), oligomeric sugars (4-12%), and a distribution of oligomers tentatively identified as being derived from phenolic glycosides (10-18%).