Tuesday, May 3, 2011
The viability of the so-called 1st generation bio feedstock such as corn is somewhat questionable because of their conflict with food supply. No matter how effective biomass is for producing bio-fuels or chemicals, its benefits quickly decrease if all the tropical forests are being razed to make energy crops, leading to another type of a large amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission pathway. From these viewpoints, seaweeds (macro algae) deserve to gain much interest as a 3rd generation biomass because of their high carbohydrate ratio as well as no lignin content in terms of producing renewable energy, which makes this bioprocess more economically viable. Furthermore, an intrinsic nature of seaweed’s squishiness makes the continuous process much more plausible, which has not been very successful in the lignocellulosic, a 2nd generation biomass process. There are three important factors affecting the hydrolyzate distribution in the continuous saccharification process, which are composed of temperature, feeding rate, and acid concentration. By tuning these parameters, we can make either sugar-dominant or acid-dominant hydrolyzate very easily.
In this session, one step, without any pretreatment, a continuous seaweed saccharification process will be provided. Furthermore, various factors determining the product distribution using the continuous process and fermentation result thereof will be discussed as well.