Butanol Production from Lignocellulosic Feedstocks by Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol Fermentation with Integrated Product Recovery
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Butanol Production from Lignocellulosic Feedstocks by Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol Fermentation with Integrated Product Recovery Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduation School of The Ohio State University By Congcong Lu, M.S. Graduate Program in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering The Ohio State University 2011 Dissertation Committee: Professor Shang-Tian Yang, Advisor Professor Jeffrey Chalmers Professor Andre Palmer 1 Copyright by Congcong Lu 2011 2 Abstract n-Butanol has been attracting research attention as a liquid biofuel recently, in addition to its current application as an industrial chemical and solvent. With the concerns of diminishing fossil reserves, environmental issues caused by greenhouse gas emission, and unstable supply and price spike of crude oil, renewed interests have returned to pursue biobutanol production through acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation as opposed to petrochemically-derived butanol. However, the conventional ABE fermentation suffers from many limitations, including low butanol titer, high cost of traditional food-based raw materials, end-product inhibition and high butanol recovery cost by distillation, which negatively impacts the process efficiency and economics. Fortunately, these hurdles are being overcome by technological advances on ABE fermentation in the past few decades. Research on genetic modifications and chemical mutation of solventogenic Clostridia has focused on obtaining mutant strains with enhanced butanol producing ability. Adequate research success in utilizing renewable and sustainable lignocellulosic biomass has identified a novel group of cost-effective feedstocks for ABE fermentation in replacement of the traditional costly starch and sugar-based substrates. Novel fed-batch ii and continuous fermentation processes with cell immobilization and cell recycle have been developed for more efficient substrate conversion and butanol production. When further integrated with alternative energy-efficient butanol recovery techniques, such as gas stripping and pervaporation, the integrated ABE fermentation process can achieve high overall butanol production, reactor productivity, sugar conversion, and simplified downstream separation. Therefore, the overall goal of this project was to develop a process to produce butanol through ABE fermentation by hyper-butanol-producing mutants using lignocellulosic biomass, and integrate online product recovery to achieve enhanced overall butanol production and process efficiency. Corn fiber, cassava bagasse, wood pulp and sugarcane bagasse were investigated as potential feedstocks for butanol production from ABE fermentation, and gas stripping as the online butanol recovery technique was evaluated and integrated with ABE fermentation. In batch fermentations with the mutant strain JB200, which was derived from C. beijerinckii ATCC 55025, immobilized in a fibrous bed bioreactor, 12.7 g/L and 15.4 g/L ABE were obtained using corn fiber hydrolysate and cassava bagasse hydrolysate, respectively. For wood pulp hydrolysate and sugarcane bagasse hydrolysate, which contained significant amounts of inhibitors from acid pretreatment, C. beijerinckii CC101 (an adaptant derived from NCIMB 8052) and its recombinant mutant strain CC101-SV6, were able to produce 11.35 g/L and 9.44 g/L ABE in free-cell batch fermentations, respectively. ABE production from wood pulp iii hydrolysate was further enhanced to 17.73 g/L in a gas stripping integrated ABE batch fermentation process, with a higher ABE yield of 0.44 g/g compared with 0.39 g/g from non-integrated control study. Concentrated cassava bagasse hydrolysate containing 584.4 g/L glucose was utilized by the mutant strain JB 200 in an integrated fed-batch ABE fermentation process, and 90.3 g/L ABE were produced with a productivity of 0.53 g/L. h, which was further improved to 108.5 g/L with nutrient supplementation. This project demonstrated that butanol can be produced from various lignocellulosic feedstocks, from agricultural biowastes to woody biomass residues, with a high yield and at a high titer using selected mutant strains of C. beijerinckii. By employing mutant strains of solventogenic Clostridia bacteria, different fermentation modes, and gas stripping as online product recovery, an integrated process was developed for the production of n-butanol that can potentially replace petroleum-based butanol. iv Dedication Dedicated to my parents v Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Shang-Tian Yang, for his guidance, encouragement, patience, and full support during my entire graduate study. I am sincerely thankful and grateful for all his help academically and financially throughout my Ph.D. study. I have never met a person of his graciousness and admirable personality. It has always been a great honor to have him as my advisor both in academia and in life. He set up an example to look up to as an excellent scientific researcher and a fantastic leader, and I have truly learned and benefited a lot from him. For this, I will eternally be grateful. I would also like to thank Dr. Jeffrey Chalmers and Dr. Andre Palmer for taking time to be on my committee, as well as their valuable recommendations and advice to my research project. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Jingbo Zhao for teaching me all the hands-on techniques and knowledge essential to operating anaerobic ABE fermentation at the beginning of my Ph.D. study, and Dr. Chuang Xue for his help on setting up the gas stripping apparatus. I would also like to thank all the previous and current laboratory members in our research group, especially Dr. Wei-lun Chang, Dr. Mingrui Yu, Ching-suei Hsu, Baohua Zhang and Zhongqiang Wang for their helpful suggestions, vi support and encouragement. In addition, I would like to specially thank for all the help and valuable suggestions from Vennie Tee at ButylFuelTM LLC, and the lignocellulosic hydrolysates kindly provided by ButylFuel. I would also like to thank Dr. Dong Wei from South China University of Technology for providing cassava bagasse, and Saju Varghese for constructing the plasmid for the mutant strain of C. beijerinckii CC101-SV6. Financial supports from the Ohio Department of Development Third Frontier Advanced Energy Program and Ohio State University Graduate School fellowship are deeply appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Mr. Yi Lu and Mrs. Yue Tan, my grandparents, my relatives and all my friends for their faith and support in me. vii Vita June 2003………………………………………Yantai No.2 senior high 2003 – 2007…………………………………… B.S. Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University 2007 – 2008…………………………………….Graduate Fellowship, The Ohio State University 2008 – 2010……………………………………. Graduate Research Associate, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University 2010 – present…………………………………..Graduate Fellowship, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering viii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………v Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….vi Vita………………………………………………………………………………………viii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………ix List of Tables………………………………………………………………......…….…xvii List of Figures………………………........……………………………………..………..xx Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………....1 1.1 Project goals and specific tasks……………………………………………….5 1.2 Significance and major impacts……………………………………………….7 1.3 References…………………………………………………………….............8 Chapter 2: Literature Review…………………………………………………………….14 2.1 Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation………………………..…….14 2.1.1 Microorganisms and strain improvements…………………….......16 2.1.2 Traditional substrates and renewable lignocellulosic feedstocks….20 2.1.3 Developments in fermentation process………………………...….23 ix 2.2 Pretreatment and detoxification of lignocellulosic feedstocks………………28 2.2.1 Pretreatment of lignocellulose……………………………………..28 2.2.2 Detoxification of lignocellulosic hydrolysate……………………..34 2.3 Product recovery and separation technologies………………………………38 2.3.1 Gas stripping……………………………………………………….40 2.3.2 Pervaporation………………………………………………………44 2.3.3 Liquid-liquid extraction……………………………………………50 2.3.4 Adsorption…………………………………………………………55 2.4 Integrated ABE fermentation process with online product recovery………..58 2.5 References…………………………………………………………………...59 Chapter 3: Butanol Production from Corn Fiber Hydrolysate by Clostridium beijerinckii in a Fibrous Bed Bioreactor………………………………………………….96 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………….97 3.2 Materials and methods……………………………………………………….99 3.2.1 Hydrolysis of corn fiber…………………………………………...99 3.2.2 Detoxification ………………………………………………...….100 3.2.3 Culture and media ……………………………………………….100 3.2.4 Fermentation and cell immobilization in fibrous bed bioreactor...101 3.2.5 Analytical methods……………………………………………….103 3.3 Results and discussion……………………………………………………...104 x 3.3.1 ABE fermentation in glucose, xylose, and glucose/xylose mixture medium………………………………………………………………....104 3.3.2 ABE fermentation in undetoxified CFH-based medium…………106 3.3.3 ABE fermentation in boiling and activated carbon detoxified CFH-based medium…………………………………………………….109 3.4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………….112 3.5 References………………………………………………………………….114 Chapter 4: Evaluation of Butanol Recovery by Gas Stripping from Model solution and Fermentation Broth…………………………………………………………124 4.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………...…125