Bioethanol is a major biofuel in industry and mainly produced from corn starch with the dry-mill process. However, one of the remaining challenges is how to economically and efficiently exploit the wasted co-products to further improve ethanol production and generate more valuable chemicals. Here, an integrative approach was developed to efficiently utilize the waste cake for ethanol production, accompanied by protein extraction for feed additives. A high-quality protein feed was produced by the ethanol-alkali extraction method (extraction rate up to 46.91%). Notably, by applying two-step chemoenzymatic strategy, the supernatant and solid recycling yield up to 4.1-, 3.8-, and 154-fold improvements of ethanol, glucose, and xylose production, respectively, comparing to non-pretreatment. Moreover, mass balance analysis found this approach significantly contributed 1.74–4.42% (5.96–15.11 kg/ton dry corn) increase of total ethanol production. The gained knowledge about process design holds the potential transferability for other sustainable biowaste management and bioethanol industry.

生物乙醇是工业上的主要生物燃料，主要由玉米淀粉通过干磨工艺生产。然而，剩下的挑战之一是如何经济有效地利用废弃的副产品，以进一步提高乙醇产量并生产更有价值的化学品。在这里，开发了一种综合方法，以有效利用废饼生产乙醇，同时提取蛋白质用于饲料添加剂。采用乙醇碱提取法生产优质蛋白饲料（提取率高达46.91%）。值得注意的是，通过应用两步化学酶促策略，与未预处理相比，上清液和固体回收率分别提高了 4.1、3.8 和 154 倍的乙醇、葡萄糖和木糖产量。而且，质量平衡分析发现，这种方法显着增加了乙醇总产量 1.74-4.42%（5.96-15.11 公斤/吨干玉米）。获得的有关工艺设计的知识为其他可持续生物废物管理和生物乙醇行业提供了潜在的可转移性。