A vertical ball mill as a new reactor design for biomass hydrolysis and fermentation process

Rafael Cunha de Assis Castro, Solange I. Mussatto and Inês Conceição Roberto

Renewable Energy, 2017, vol. 114, issue PB, 775-780

Abstract: A vertical ball mill (VBM) reactor was evaluated for use in biomass conversion processes. The effects of agitation speed (100–200 rpm), number of glass spheres (0–30 units) and temperature (40–46 °C) on enzymatic hydrolysis of rice straw and on glucose fermentation by a thermotolerant Kluyveromyces marxianus strain were separately studied. The results revealed an important role of the spheres during biomass' fiber liquefaction and yeast's fermentative performance. For hydrolysis, the spheres were the only variable with significant positive impact on cellulose conversion, while for fermentation all the variables have influenced the ethanol volumetric productivity (QP). For QP, the spheres showed an interactive effect with temperature, being obtained a maximum of 2.16 g/L.h when both variables were used in the lowest level. By applying the needed adjustments on the levels of the variables for each process (hydrolysis and fermentation), the VBM reactor could be efficiently used for biomass conversion into ethanol.

Keywords: Non-conventional reactor; Rice straw; Enzymatic hydrolysis; Ethanol; Kluyveromyces marxianus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014811730722X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:114:y:2017:i:pb:p:775-780

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2017.07.095

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().