Acetic acid carbohydrate fermentation product

Aside from potential sensory implications, acetic acid and associated products of LAB metabolism represent potent inhibitors to fermentatively growing Saccharomyces, delaying the onset of fermentation and potentially causing fermentation to stick (see previous discussion of Microbial Antagonism). At pH >3.5, bacterial carbohydrate metabolism (Peynaud and Domercq, 1968) or MLF (Giannakopoulis et al., 1984 Zeeman et al., 1982) yielded higher concentrations of acetic acid than parallel lots at a lower pH. 

Due to fermentation of hitherto undigested carbohydrates by the cecal and colonic bacteria (the large bowel contains concentrations of bacteria of up to 10lo-1012 bacteria/ mL), the pH in the proximal colon is usually lower than that of the ileum. This is reflected in the composition of SCoF, which is essentially an acetate buffer. The use of acetate is appropriate as it is known that the products of carbohydrate fermentation include very short chain acids (acetate, propionate, and butyrate are typical). 

The fermentative production of lactic acid from carbohydrates has repeatedly been reviewed recently [36, 41, 42]. Two classes of lactic acid producers are discerned the homofermentative lactic acid bacteria, which produce lactic acid as the sole product, and the heterofermentative ones, which also produce ethanol, acetic acid etc. [43]. Recently, the focus has been on (S)-L-lactic acid producing, homofermentative Lactobacillus ddbrueckii subspecies [42]. 

Wood is about 65—75% carbohydrate and has been considered as a potential source of ethanol for fuel. The carbohydrate material can be hydrolyzed to monomer sugars, which in turn can be fermented to produce ethanol. However, wood carbohydrates are expensive to hydrolyze. Hydrolysis with acids and enzymes is impeded by the crystalline structure of cellulose. Lignin interferes with processing, and hydrolytic by-products such as furfural, acetic acid, and derivatives of lignin and extractives can inhibit fermentation. Research is still being conducted on wood hydrolysis to develop a process that is economically sound. Furfural is a useful chemical feedstock and results from the dehydration of pentose sugars. It can be obtained in 9 to 10% yield from the dilute acid hydrolysis of hardwoods (75). 

LAB are non-respiring microorganisms, principally generating ATP by fermentation of carbohydrates coupled to substrate-level phosphorylation. The two major pathways for the metabolism of hexoses are homofermentative or glycolysis (Embden-Meyerhof pathway), in which lactic acid is virtually the only end-product, and heterofermentative (phosphoketolase pathway), in which other end-products such as acetic acid, C02, and ethanol are produced in addition to lactic acid (Axelsson et al., 1989 Kandler, 1983 Zourari et al., 1992). 

For a number of reasons, a great deal of effort has been directed to the degradation of alkanoic acids acetate, propionate, and butyrate are fermentation products of carbohydrates and are metabolites of the aerobic degradation of alklanes and related compounds, while long-chain acids are produced by the hydrolysis of lipids. Studies on the degradation of alkanoic adds have been carried out using both pure cultures and syntrophic associations that have been discussed in Section 4.5.1. 

Lactic acid is mainly prepared in large quantities (around 200 kT per year) by the bacterial fomentation of carbohydrates. These fermentation processes can be classified according to the type of bacteria used (i) the hetero-fermentative method, which produces less than 1.8 mol of lactic acid per mole of hexose, with otho- metabolites in significant quantities, such as acetic acid, ethanol, glycerol, mannitol and carbon dioxide (ii) the homo-fomentative method, which leads to greater yields of lactic acid and lower levels of by-products, and is mainly used in industrial processes [3]. The convo-sion yield from glucose to lactic acid is more than 90 per cent. 

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