Using the raw materials to produce biological and chemical combination production and biomass energy have become a global strategy for sustainable development. In this study, corn stover was pretreated by using the newly steam explosion to separate the components at first. Then zinc chloride solution was used to destruct the crystallinity of cellulose. Based on the single factor experiments, the effects of zinc chloride concentration, pretreatment time and temperature were investigated by response surface methodology. A mathematical model was established and analyzed to describe the relationships between the studied factors and the response of the cellulose solubility of corn stover. The structures of untreated/treated corn stalk were detected by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) .The optimum pretreatment parameters were as follows: zinc chloride concentration of 87%, pretreatment time of 49 min and pretreatment temperature for 139℃. Under the optimum conditions, cellulose solubility of corn stover of 1g was up to 0.762g.