Solid-state fermentation with pretreated rice husk: Green technology for the distilled spirit (Baijiu) production

Environmentally friendly chemistry is the development trend of Baijiu production. However, there are still many problems that need to be addressed urgently in the current Baijiu production process. First, the production of Baijiu produces a large amount of brown water (Huangshui, HS), which may cause pollution to the environment. Second, the solid-state fermentation produces low amounts of alcohol. Combining with the practical experience of Baijiu production, we have proposed an environmentally friendly method of producing Baijiu. The results confirmed that rice husk with pretreatment of HS significantly reduced the hardness of rice husk, enhanced the elasticity of the skeleton structure of rice husk, and improved its efficiency as an auxiliary material for solid-state fermentation. Therefore, this method can not only effectively utilize HS, but also improve the efficiency of solid-state fermentation and reduce the amount of food consumption, which is in line with the development concept of green chemistry.