Monday, April 19, 2010
12-14

Application of membrane technologies in the two-step fermentation process to produce butanol

Jianjun Du, Robert Beitle, Edgar Clausen, and Jamie Hestekin. Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Arkansas, 3202 Bell Engineering Center, Fayetteville, AR 72703

Butanol is a potential alternative transport fuel which can be produced sustainably from different biomass sources. Traditional Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol fermentation processes can convert sugars to acetone, butanol and ethanol at the ratio of 3-6-1 by Clostridium acetobutylicum. This process suffers from low butanol yield and productivity.  In order to improve the butanol productivity and yield, a two-step fermentation process, which uses Clostridium tyrobutyricum to convert sugars to butyric acid in a first step fermentation and Clostridium acetobutylicum to convert butyric acid to butanol in a second step fermentation, was developed (Ramey, 1998). Membrane technologies can be used to improve the performance of this two-step fermentation process. Butyric acid fermentation results and modeled for batch, continuous, continuous with cell recycle by ultrafiltration, and continous with cell recycle by ultrafiltration and simultaneuous product separation by electrodeionization will be presented. These results show that a combination of maximum cell concentration and minimization of cell growth rate give the highest possible production rate and yield of butryic acid. 

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