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Title: Aeration costs in stirred-tank and bubble column bioreactors

Journal Article · · Biochemical Engineering Journal
 [1];  [2];  [2]
  1. DWH Process Consulting LLC, Centennial, CO (United States)
  2. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
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To overcome knowledge gaps in the economics of large-scale aeration for production of commodity products, Aspen Plus is used to simulate steady-state oxygen delivery in both stirred-tank and bubble column bioreactors, using published engineering correlations for oxygen mass transfer as a function of aeration rate and power input, coupled with new equipment cost estimates developed in Aspen Capital Cost Estimator and validated against vendor quotations. Here, these simulations describe the cost efficiency of oxygen delivery as a function of oxygen uptake rate and vessel size, and show that capital and operating costs for oxygen delivery drop considerably moving from standard-size (200 m3) to world-class size (500 m3) reactors, but only marginally in further scaling up to hypothetically large (1000 m3) reactors. Finally, this analysis suggests bubble-column reactor systems can reduce overall costs for oxygen delivery by 10-20% relative to stirred tanks at low to moderate oxygen transfer rates up to 150 mmol/L-h.

Research Organization:
National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Sustainable Transportation Office. Bioenergy Technologies Office
Grant/Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308; DEAC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1392775
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1549880
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA-5100-69024
Journal Information:
Biochemical Engineering Journal, Vol. 127, Issue C; ISSN 1369-703X
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 44 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (7)

Fermentation Economics journal May 1986
Microbial production of bulk chemicals: development of anaerobic processes journal April 2011
Thermodynamics-based design of microbial cell factories for anaerobic product formation journal September 2015
Bioreactor scale-up and oxygen transfer rate in microbial processes: An overview journal March 2009
Dissolved oxygen concentration profiles in a production-scale bioreactor journal May 1984
Mass transfer, mixing and heat transfer phenomena in low viscosity bubble column reactors journal April 1984
Thinking big: towards ideal strains and processes for large-scale aerobic biofuels production journal December 2016

Cited By (3)

Assessment of upstream bioprocessing journal June 2019
Gas-liquid mass transfer and bubble size distribution in a multi-Cyclone separator journal October 2018
Modeling ethanol production through gas fermentation: a biothermodynamics and mass transfer-based hybrid model for microbial growth in a large-scale bubble column bioreactor journal March 2020

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09 BIOMASS FUELS
aerobic fermentation
bioreactor design
capital cost
gas-liquid oxygen mass transfer