Tuesday, April 20, 2010
11-17

Pretreatment and fermentation of sugar beet pulp into fuel ethanol

Yi Zheng, Christopher Lee, Chaowei Yu, Yu-Shen Cheng, Ruihong Zhang, Jean VanderGheynst, and Bryan Jenkins. Biological and Agricultural Engineering, University of California, Davis, One Shields Ave, 3043 Bainer Hall, Davis, CA 95616

Sugar beet pulp is the residue of beet sugar processing and is a promising feedstock for fuel ethanol production based on its high carbohydrate content (65-75%, dry weight basis), including 19-25% cellulose, 20-26% hemicellulose and 18-26% pectin. Those three carbohydrate fractions can be hydrolyzed and converted into ethanol simultaneously via fermentation using certain microorganisms such as Escherichia coli KO11. However, E. coli KO11 is unable to hydrolyze these polysaccharides. For this reason chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis is required prior to fermentation to ethanol. This research used response surface methodology to investigate the effects of temperature, acid concentration and solid loading on sugar beet pulp hydrolysis by dilute sulfuric acid pretreatment. Approximately 100% of the hemicellulose was hydrolyzed with more than 80% sugar yield at T=160°C, acid concentration=1.0% and sugar beet pulp solid loading=6.0%. Carbohydrate and protein levels were also tracked during pretreatment. Enzymatic hydrolysis of untreated and pretreated sugar beet pulp was also examined for obtaining fermentable components. E. coli KO11 was used to ferment raw and pretreated sugar beet pulp and pretreatment hydrolyzates into ethanol. The results from this research will be used to develop an integrated sugar beet pulp-based biorefinery for ethanol production.


Web Page: vandergheynst.engineering.ucdavis.edu/research/biomassstorage.html

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