Steam explosion pretreatment: Dramatic reduction in energy consumption for wheat bran grinding

Wheat bran has attracted attention for its high dietary fiber content with unique nutritional value. Grinding wheat bran into flour to produce whole wheat products effectively meets the surging demand for functional foods. Nonetheless, the grinding of high-tenacity wheat bran requires a huge amount of energy, which raises the costs of wheat bran flour. To reduce the energy consumption in wheat bran flour, we proposed a steam explosion pretreatment assisted wheat bran grinding process in this study. Steam explosion (0.5 MPa, 2 min) allows effective destruction of the wheat bran dense structure, reduces the mechanical properties of the wheat bran, and increases the yield and cell wall breakage rate of the wheat bran flour. The steam explosion pretreatment can reduce energy consumption by 57.6% in the wheat bran grinding process, which offers tremendous opportunities for making industrial production a success story. Besides, reconstituted whole wheat flour with the addition of steam-exploded wheat bran exhibited excellent processing properties. Overall, this work demonstrates that steam explosion pretreatment has a significant effect on wheat bran and drastically reduces energy consumption during wheat bran grinding, and steam-exploded wheat bran flour can upgrade the processability of reconstituted whole wheat flour, which holds tremendous application potential.