Resolving mismatches in the flexible production of ethanol and butanol from eucalyptus wood with vacuum fermentation

Author(s)

Assumpcao, Daniel de Castro ^[1] ; Ccopa Rivera, Elmer Alberto ^{[1, 2]} ; Tovar, Laura Plazas ^[3] ; Ezeji, Thaddeus Chukwuemeka ^[2] ; Maciel Filho, Rubens ^[1] ; Mariano, Adriano Pinto ^[1]

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Estadual Campinas, Sch Chem Engn, Lab Optimizat Design & Adv Control LOPCA, UNICAMP, Campinas, SP - Brazil

^[2] Ohio State Univ, Dept Anim Sci, Ohio State Agr Res & Dev Ctr, Wooster, OH - USA

^[3] Fed Univ Santa Maria UFSM, Dept Chem Engn, Santa Maria, RS - Brazil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering; v. 41, n. 11, p. 1651-1663, NOV 2018.
• Web of Science Citations: 2

Abstract

In flexible ethanol-butanol plants, low tolerance to butanol by solventogenic clostridia (and resulting dilute fermentation) results in considerable number of empty fermentors whenever production focuses on ethanol. This research identified scenarios in which vacuum fermentation (in-situ vacuum recovery) may be applied to solve this problem. We conducted ethanol (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and ABE (Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 8052) batch vacuum fermentations of eucalyptus hydrolysates according to the distribution of sugars in a flexible plant. Based on the experiments and performance targets set for the ABE fermentation, we simulated a flexible plant that processes 1000 dry t eucalyptus/day using pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis steps with moderate solids loading (15% w/w). The simulation showed that the number of fermentation tanks can decrease by 62% (eliminating 10 idle tanks, 3748m(3) each) by applying vacuum recovery only to the fermentation of mixed (cellulose+hemicellulose) hydrolysates to ABE. We concluded that this configuration can result in savings of up to 2 MMUS\$/year in comparison with flexible plants having only conventional batch fermentors, and additional cost savings are expected from reduced wastewater footprint. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/50243-2 - Energy-efficient production of butanol (an advanced biofuel) from eucalyptus wood
• Grantee: Adriano Pinto Mariano
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• FAPESP's process: 16/01785-0 - Butanol production from eucalyptus wood: effect of glycerol on in situ detoxification of lignocellulose-derived microbial inhibitors and in silico analysis of the metabolism of Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 8052
• Grantee: Elmer Alberto Ccopa Rivera
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• FAPESP's process: 15/07097-5 - Development of a bioprocess with high energy efficiency for the flexible production of butanol/ethanol integrated to a Kraft pulp mill
• Grantee: Adriano Pinto Mariano
• Support Opportunities: Program for Research on Bioenergy (BIOEN) - Regular Program Grants