Journal
BIORESOURCE TECHNOLOGY
Volume 101, Issue 13, Pages 4862-4874Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2009.11.009
Keywords
Continuous fermentation; Enzymatic hydrolysis; Fuel ethanol; Lignocellulosic biomass; Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF)
Funding
- National Institute of Standards and Technology [60NANB1D0064]
- USDA National Research Initiative [2008-35504-04596]
- Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California at Riverside through the Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT)
- Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department
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Ethanol made biologically from a variety of cellulosic biomass sources such as agricultural and forestry residues, grasses, and fast growing wood is widely recognized as a unique sustainable liquid transportation fuel with powerful economic, environmental, and strategic attributes, but production costs must be competitive for these benefits to be realized. Continuous hydrolysis and fermentation processes offer important potential advantages in reducing costs, but little has been done on continuous processing of cellulosic biomass to ethanol. As shown in this review, some continuous fermentations are now employed for commercial ethanol production from cane sugar and corn to take advantage of higher volumetric productivity, reduced labor costs, and reduced vessel down time for cleaning and filling. On the other hand, these systems are more susceptible to microbial contamination and require more sophisticated operations. Despite the latter challenges, continuous processes could be even more important to reducing the costs of overcoming the recalcitrance of cellulosic biomass, the primary obstacle to low cost fuels, through improving the effectiveness of utilizing expensive enzymes. In addition, continuous processing could be very beneficial in adapting fermentative organisms to the wide range of inhibitors generated during biomass pretreatment or its acid catalyzed hydrolysis. If sugar generation rates can be increased, the high cell densities in a continuous system could enable higher productivities and yields than in batch fermentations. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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