Acetone from molasses

Resinous materials have also been made directly from molasses for example, Vazquez describes a resin that is made by merely heating molasses with sulfuric acid and a solvent such as acetone or ethyl acetate. The extract, on evaporation, gave a hard insoluble resin which could be molded. 

The Steffen process, which uses calcium oxide for precipitation of sucrose from molasses, has been applied to the recovery of lactose from cheese whey (Cerbulis 1973). By proper control of the reaction, over 90% of the lactose can be recovered as an insoluble calcium-lactose complex. The addition of ferric chloride in combination with calcium oxide improves lactose yields. Addition of equal volumes of acetone or methanol gives almost complete precipitation of lactose and protein from whey. 

Barium hydroxide has also been used to recover sucrose from molasses, but when applied to lactose, no precipitate formed on addition of alkali. This indicates that the barium-lactose complex was more soluble than the calcium-lactose complex. Even addition of acetone at levels comprising 20% of the final volume gave a much lower recovery of lactose (Nickerson 1979). 

Production of acetone, butanol, and ethanol from molasses in 90,000-1 batch fermentation in South Africa ... 

Until World War 1 acetone was manufactured commercially by the dry distillation of calcium acetate from lime and pyroligneous acid (wood distillate) (9). During the war processes for acetic acid from acetylene and by fermentation supplanted the pyroligneous acid (10). In turn these methods were displaced by the process developed for the bacterial fermentation of carbohydrates (cornstarch and molasses) to acetone and alcohols (11). At one time Pubhcker Industries, Commercial Solvents, and National Distillers had combined biofermentation capacity of 22,700 metric tons of acetone per year. Biofermentation became noncompetitive around 1960 because of the economics of scale of the isopropyl alcohol dehydrogenation and cumene hydroperoxide processes. 

Butyl alcohol can be obtained from carbohydrates (such as molasses and grain) by fermentation. Acetone and ethanol are also produced. Synthetic processes account for the majority of current-day production. Propylene and synthesis gas give -butyl alcohol. Isobutyl alcohol is a byproduct. 

Butanol, which at one time was an unwanted by-product in the preparation of acetone, is now the most important product of the fermentation. The building of a large new factory in Puerto Rico using 10,000 tons of molasses per annum for its production is an indication of this importance. Butanol is probably still the best solvent for cellulose nitrate lacquers. Dibutyl phthalate is certainly the most widely used plasticizer for synthetic resins, and butyl oleate, tributyl citrate and dibutyl tartrate have also been described as plasticizers. Another important use of butanol is as a source of butadiene, which serves as an intermediate in the conversion of sucrose into a synthetic rubber. Although in recent years other methods have been described for the preparation of butanol (for example, from ethyl alcohol and from acetylene), yet the fermentation of carbohydrates is still the cheapest process. 

Twenty-five years ago the only oxygenated aliphatics produced in important quantities were ethyl and n-butyl alcohols and acetone made by the fermentation of molasses and grain, glycerol made from fats and oils, and methanol and acetic acid made by the pyrolysis of wood. In 1927 the production of acetic acid (from acetylene) and methanol (from synthesis gas) was begun, both made fundamentally from coal. All these oxygenated products are still made from the old raw materials by the same or similar processes, but the amount so made has changed very little in the past quarter century. Nearly all the tremendous growth in the production of this class of compounds has come from petroleum hydrocarbons. 

Use Feed, food, raw material for various alcohols, acetone, citric acid, and yeast propagation. Sodium glutamate is made from Steffens molasses, a waste liquor from beet sugar manufacture. 

For example, an ABE plant was established at Germinston, South Africa in 1937 and ran successfully until 1983, first producing solvent from starch but switching to molasses. The fermentation and distillation recovery process operated in batch mode. The fermentation produced approximately 20gl of mixed solvents from 55 to 60 g 1 of substrate with solvent yields of about 0.35 g g sugar. The butanol acetone molar ratio is typically 2 1 [178]. 

Molasses is mixed with bagasse or bagasse pith for direct ruminent feeding. Over 80% of the molasses in the United States is used in animal feeds. With the rising cost of petrochemical feedstocks, molasses again is being considered as a raw material for acetone eind butanol production, and, it should be noted that, of the world food alcohol production of 5 million tons, over 3 million tons comes from fermentation. 

The demise of solvent fermentation in North America and East Asia between the late 1950s and the early 1960s resulted from both the competitive uses for molasses, which drove up the cost of raw materials, and the rise of the petrochemical industry, which drove down the price of the chemically synthesized huta-nol and acetone. However, this industrial fermentation did not totally disappear after the 1960s. The continued operation of the fermentation in South Africa between 1936 and 1982 illustrates the importance of the local conditions in determining the cost effectiveness and the necessity of the fermentation. The use of butanol as an extractant by the food and pharmaceutical industries may also create a demand for the fermentation product as it does not contain the carcinogens that may be present in butanol produced from petrochemicals. The continued use of the fermentation process to produce butanol in China may partly be due to this consideration. 

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