Fermentation separate carbohydrates from

Figure 16.8 Typical concept to separate carbohydrates from fermentation broths.

The cellulosic substrate is depolymerized by water (or possibly other agents) so that simple sugars can be obtained. If the pretreatments totally separate cellulose from hemicellulose, the simple sugar would be glucose. Otherwise, the glucose will be mixed with other carbohydrates that may interfere with the fermentation. 

Throughout history, most cultures have learned to use and control the process of fermentation. Regardless of the carbohydrate source used, the ethanol produced is the same, while the taste may vary with the carbohydrate source. Hard liquors are those produced by distillation which concentrates the ethanol and separates it from the starting material. Beer and wine contain some of the nutrients present in the malted barley or fruit juice. 

Some of the economic hurdles and process cost centers of this conventional carbohydrate fermentation process, schematically shown in Eigure 1, are in the complex separation steps which are needed to recover and purify the product from the cmde fermentation broths. Eurthermore, approximately a ton of gypsum, CaSO, by-product is produced and needs to be disposed of for every ton of lactic acid produced by the conventional fermentation and recovery process (30). These factors have made large-scale production by this conventional route economically and ecologically unattractive. 

Irrespective of the type of biomass used for ethanol production, the biomass needs to be pretreated to make the carbohydrates available for fermentation. However, which enzymes can be used depends on the source of the biomass. In addition, the biomass needs pretreatment before the enzymes are used. The first step of the pretreatment can be of a physical nature. Once the biomass is physically pretreated, the cellulose structures are open for enzyme action. In biomass from forests, the substance is mainly in the form of cellulose. Targeted enzymes are selective for the reaction of cellulose to glucose, and therefore there are no degradation byproducts, as occurs in acid conversion technology. There are at least three ways this can be performed. Firstly, in separate hydrolysis and fermentation, the pretreated biomass is treated with cellulase, which hydrolyzes the cellulose to glucose at 50 °C and pH 4.8. Secondly, in simultaneous fermentation and saccharification (SSF) the hydrolysis and fermentation take place in the same bioreactor. Thirdly,... 

In principle, the same carbohydrates and their degradation products formed after hydrolysis of wood can be recovered from sulfite spent liquors. However, this requires complicated and expensive separation techniques. The industrial use of sulfite spent liquor components is mainly limited to fermentation processes. The most common product is ethyl alcohol which is produced from hexose sugars by yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisae) and separated from the mixture by distillation. Even the carbon dioxide formed in the process can be recovered. Other fermentation products, including acetone, n-butanol, and lactic acid, can be produced by certain microorganisms. Because some contaminants, for example, sulfur dioxide, inhibit the growth of the yeast, they must be removed from the liquor prior to the fermentation. 

Microorganisms are also capable of separating optical isomers. In the case of sodium glutamate, where it is necessary to start from levo-glutamic acid to obtain the desired flavor, and where synthesis produces only a racemic blend, it was a particular yeast called Micrococcus glutamicus that led to the required isomer through carbohydrate fermentation. 

There are many publications and comprehensive handbooks on the thin-layer chromatography (TLC) of carbohydrates (e.g., Refs. 1 and 2). The reason is their great importance in life science and the great diversity of cases monosaccharide, disaccharide, trisaccharide, oligosaccharide, polysaccharide, aldose, ke-tose, triose, tetrose, pentose, hexose, as well as reducing and nonreducing sugars. In addition, when extracted from natural products or produced by fermentation, carbohydrates are accompanied by many impurities. That is why separation methods are used predominantly for their analysis. 

Pulverization can reduce the size as well as the crystallinity of cellulosic materials and increase the surface area and bulk density. It is also possible to separate part of the hgnin from carbohydrates which makes it easier for microorganisms to digest cellulose. Various equipment, such as a compression mill, a bead mill, an extruder, a roll mill and disc refiners, etc., can be used for pulverization. Unfortunately these methods tend to be very expensive and too energy intensive. For sohd-state fermentation, if the particles are too fine, the oxygen mass transfer will become a big problem therefore, hghtly crushed or just ground raw material will suffice. 

Cao et al. [60-62] examined a fractionation option that used corn cob and aspen woodchip as the substrates. In this biomass fractionation scheme (Fig. 6), the majority of lignin, alkaline extractives, and acetate were solubilized and separated from cellulose and hemicellulose fractions by alkaline treatment. Hemicellulose was then hydrolyzed to its sugar constituents with dilute acid (0.3 M HCl). Hemicellulose carbohydrates were then fermented to ethanol by a xylose-fermenting yeast strain (Fig. 7). The cellulose fraction, after separation from lignin and hemicellulose, was used as the substrate in the SSF process for ethanol production using a thermotolerant yeast strain as the biocatalyst (Fig. 8). 

Higher Fermentation Yields. With a continuous sterilizer, proteins can be sterilized separately from carbohydrates and salts. The residence time at high temperature is short. There is less interaction and degradation of raw materials, resulting in higher fermentation yields. 

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