Minimum-sized ideal reactor for continuous alcohol fermentation using immobilized microorganism
Recently, alcohol fermentation has gained considerable attention with the aim of lowering its production cost in the production processes of both fuel ethanol and alcoholic beverages. The over-all cost is a summation of costs of various subsystems such as raw material (sugar, starch, and cellulosic substances) treatment, fermentation process, and alcohol separation from water solutions; lowering the cost of the fermentation processes is very important in lowering the total cost. Several new techniques have been developed for economic continuous ethanol production, use of a continuous wine fermentor with no mechanical stirring, cell recycle combined with continuous removal of ethanol under vaccum, a technique involving a bed of yeast admixed with an inert carrier, and use of immobilized yeast reactors in packed-bed column and in a three-stage double conical fluidized-bed bioreactor. All these techniques lead to increases more or less, in reactor productivity, which in turn result in the reduction of the reactor size for a given production rate and a particular conversion. Since an improvement in the fermentation process often leads to a reduction of fermentor size and hence, a lowering of the initial construction cost, it is important to theoretically arrive at a solution to what is the minimum-size setup of ideal reactors from the viewpoint of liquid backmixing. In this short communication, the minimum-sized ideal reactor for continuous alcohol fermentation using immobilized cells will be specifically discussed on the basis of a mathematical model. The solution will serve for designing an optimal bioreactor. (Refs. 26).
- Research Organization:
- Dept of Food Science and Tech, Faculty of Agriculture, Nagoya Univ, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464, Japan
- OSTI ID:
- 5793535
- Journal Information:
- Biotechnol. Bioeng.; (United States), Vol. 24:12
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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The minimum-sized ideal reactor for continuous alcohol fermentation using immobilized microorganism
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Related Subjects
BIOREACTORS
DESIGN
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
ETHANOL
PRODUCTION
CONTINUOUS CULTURE
FERMENTATION
IMMOBILIZED CELLS
OPTIMIZATION
SIZE
ALCOHOLS
BIOCONVERSION
HYDROXY COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
090222* - Alcohol Fuels- Preparation from Wastes or Biomass- (1976-1989)
140504 - Solar Energy Conversion- Biomass Production & Conversion- (-1989)