Abstract:Aiming to enhance the promotion of straw ball milling pretreatment technology and assess the feasibility of scaling up the ball milling pretreatment process, the energy consumption during straw ball milling pretreatment was predicted at a larger scale by using discrete element simulation, followed by verification of the pretreatment efficacy post-scaling. After increasing the cylinder size of the CJM-SY-B vibrating ball mill in laboratory conditions to 24 times its original volume, a three-dimensional geometric model was constructed. The EDEM software was employed to simulate impact energy dissipation within the ball mill by inputting physical property parameters for corn stalks both at initial stages and after milling, thereby estimating energy consumption for scaled-0up operations. Concurrently, particle size distribution and sugar production concentration from corn straw subjected to ball milling were compared across two different scales, validating the effectiveness of straw ball milling treatment. Results indicated that predicted energy consumption was 1.48kW·h/kg of straw while actual consumption measured at 1.65kW·h/kg with a relative prediction error of 10.3%. The difference in particle size span between laboratory-scale and scaled-up corn stalks was merely 0.8%, with total monosaccharide concentrations resulting from enzymatic hydrolysis recorded as 85.5g/L and 88.5g/L respectively;these findings suggested that enzymatic hydrolysis efficiency for corn straw remained largely unchanged despite scale enlargement in milling processes. This research substantiated the viability of utilizing discrete element methods for scaling up corn stalk processing and offered theoretical insights along with technical support for broader applications in stalk milling.
