Evangelos Sklavounos

Butanol production from lignocellulosics

Clostridium spp. produce n-butanol in the acetone/butanol/ethanol process. For sustainable industrial scale butanol production, a number of obstacles need to be addressed including choice of feedstock, the low product yield, toxicity to production strain, multiple-end products and downstream processing of alcohol mixtures. This review describes the use of lignocellulosic feedstocks, bioprocess and metabolic engineering, downstream processing and catalytic refining of n-butanol.

Continuous acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation using SO2-ethanol-water spent liquor from spruce

SO2-ethanol-water (SEW) spent liquor from spruce chips was successfully used for batch and continuous production of acetone, butanol and ethanol (ABE). Initially, batch experiments were performed using spent liquor to check the suitability for production of ABE. Maximum concentration of total ABE was found to be 8.79 g/l using 4-fold diluted SEW liquor supplemented with 35 g/l of glucose. The effect of dilution rate on solvent production, productivity and yield was studied in column reactor consisting of immobilized Clostridium acetobutylicum DSM 792 on wood pulp. Total solvent concentration of 12 g/l was obtained at a dilution rate of 0.21 h(-1). The maximum solvent productivity (4.86 g/l h) with yield of 0.27 g/g was obtained at dilution rate of 0.64 h(-1). Further, to increase the solvent yield, the unutilized sugars were subjected to batch fermentation.

Conditioning of SO2-ethanol-water spent liquor from spruce for the production of chemicals by ABE fermentation.

Abstract The objective of this study is to develop a process for conditioning spent liquor produced by SO2-ethanol-water (SEW) fractionation of spruce wood chips for fermentation to butanol, ethanol and acetone/isopropanol, i.e., by means of the so called acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) process using Clostridia bacteria. This study serves as part of an overall project aiming at the development of economic processes for producing chemicals and biofuels from mixed forest biomass via SEW fractionation and ABE fermentation technologies.

Oil palm empty fruit bunch to biofuels and chemicals via SO2–ethanol–water fractionation and ABE fermentation

A process has been developed for conversion of spent liquor produced by SO2-ethanol-water (SEW) fractionation of oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fibers to biofuels by ABE fermentation. The fermentation process utilizes Clostridia bacteria that produce butanol, ethanol and acetone solvents at a total yield of 0.26 g/g sugars. A conditioning scheme is developed, which demonstrates that it is possible to utilize the hemicellulose sugars from this agricultural waste stream by traditional ABE fermentation. Fractionation as well as sugar hydrolysis in the spent liquor is hindered by the high cation content of OPEFB, which can be partly removed by acidic leaching suggesting that a better deashing method is necessary. Furthermore, it is inferred that better and more selective lignin removal is needed during conditioning to improve liquor fermentability.