(505b) BioProcess Intensification In the Production of Bioethanol Using Saccharomyces Cerevisiae W303

Fermentation is a very well established and very important technology, especially due to the emerging new applications in bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass. Bioethanol production from biomass through fermentation can be achieved in small scale distributed plants provided that the process is intensified so that the burden of ?economies of scale' is not present. We recently developed a BioProcess Intensification technique for fermentation and applied to the conversion of glucose to ethanol using Saccharomyces cerevisiae W303. The technique is based on the development of materials for the construction of novel continuous bioreactors with the aim of achieving 10-100 fold enhancement. We investigated the effects of materials' biochemical structure, reactor design and processing conditions such as flow rates, substrate and nutrient concentrations. Productivities were compared with the reported batch processes. The results will be presented in detailed.