Treatment of Rice Hull by Steam Explosion Process

A steam explosion apparatus was set up for the study of treatment of rice hull. Effects of cooking temperature and cooking time on liquid products, yield of exploded rice hull, content of different components in the rice hull were studied in detail. Liquid products, which contained 30%～40% oligomers, were a good feed for the purification of various oligomers. The exploded rice hull had a very good property in water absorption and was easy to be pulverized. It was proved that the exploded rice hull could be used partly as a culture medium for growing edible mushrooms. From the analyses of components in the rice hull, we could see that most of hemicellulose could be decomposed in the steam explosion process, while cellulose, lignin and SiO₂ was changed slightly.