Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Brandon Emme1, P. Saunders1, X. Li1, K. Brandon Sutton1, L. Jones1, C. Corbett1, L. Putnam1, Jeremy Javers2, C. Gerken2, Erik M. Kuhn3 and S. F. Maltha4, (1)Novozymes North America, Inc., Franklinton, NC, (2)ICM, Inc, Colwich, KS, (3)National Bioenergy Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, (4)Royal Nedalco, Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands
Aspect ratios can affect the impact of mixing and hence important parameters like diffusion. pH control can functionally work differently. Head pressure is present only in larger vessels. Physical losses can give different impressions of the process mass balance. For these and other reasons, it is essential to attempt to scale up experiments from the bench to the barrel to assess if the same control parameters can reproduce experimental data. These scaleup results can then be used to refine and solidify assumptions used to characterize and score different process design strategies.
Pilot plant trials involving Pretreatment, Hydrolysis and Fermentation were conducted at several facilities at various scales. Different pilot scale dilute acid corn stover pretreatments were evaluated in a range of pilot systems. Hydrolyses were made using Novozymes’ 2010 commercial product Cellic CTec2 using several processing strategies at commercially relevant enzyme doses. Propagation and Fermentation were made using Nedalco’s RN1016 C5 yeast strain using Novozymes’ FastFermentation setup.
Differences and similarities between lab and pilot scale enzyme hydrolysis will be presented, helping to demonstrate and understand how smaller scale lab hydrolyses can simulate some larger scale hydrolysis setups. Ties into Pretreatment and Fermentation steps will also be discussed. Finally, the optimal process design to reach the lowest possible minimum ethanol selling price using pilot data generated across all three process steps will also be given.
