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Lir Treatment of lignocellulosic agricultural byproducts such as grass <br /> and leaves with alkaline hydrogen peroxide (1,2) has been shown to greatly <br /> increase susceptibility of cell wall carbohydrates in these materials to <br /> digestion by cellulolytic microorganisms such as those in the ruminant gut <br /> (3). It is believed that feeding studies with sheep and cattle will <br /> demonstrate that alkaline hydrogen peroxide treatment will increase the <br /> digestibility of waste material to a level comparable to that observed for <br /> cereal grains, allowing use of waste as a major component in ruminant <br /> diets for growth and production (3-5). The possibility of utilizing <br /> suitably treated lignocellulose as an efficient ruminant feed could have <br /> major impact on livestock production practices in areas where supplies of <br /> indigenous lignocellulose are abundant and where cereal grain supplies are <br /> limited or are utilized primarily for human food (6) . <br /> tr, Previous studies of alkaline hydrogen peroxide treatment focused on <br /> the treatment's effects on lignocellulose composition and digestion/fermen- <br /> tation properties, with little attention paid to economic or scale-up <br /> considerations. In those studies (1-5), we employed a batch, wet-slurry <br /> process in which straw was suspended in water (typically 40-100 g straw/1) <br /> containing hydrogen peroxide (10 g/1), and the slurry pH was adjusted to <br /> 11.5. The high levels of hydrogen peroxide (250 g/kg straw), loss of po- <br /> tentially fermentable carbohydrates (2,7), and the liquid waste stream <br /> represent economic obstacles that must be addressed by any commercial <br /> implementation of this technology for the production of a low value pro- <br /> duct such as ruminant animal feed. <br />