Introducing Textiles as Material of Construction of Ethanol Bioreactors

Osagie A. Osadolor, Patrik R. Lennartsson and Mohammad J. Taherzadeh
Additional contact information
Osagie A. Osadolor: Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery, University of Borås, SE 501-90, Borås, Sweden
Patrik R. Lennartsson: Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery, University of Borås, SE 501-90, Borås, Sweden
Mohammad J. Taherzadeh: Swedish Centre for Resource Recovery, University of Borås, SE 501-90, Borås, Sweden

Energies, 2014, vol. 7, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: The conventional materials for constructing bioreactors for ethanol production are stainless and cladded carbon steel because of the corrosive behaviour of the fermenting media. As an alternative and cheaper material of construction, a novel textile bioreactor was developed and examined. The textile, coated with several layers to withstand the pressure, resist the chemicals inside the reactor and to be gas-proof was welded to form a 30 L lab reactor. The reactor had excellent performance for fermentative production of bioethanol from sugar using baker’s yeast. Experiments with temperature and mixing as process parameters were performed. No bacterial contamination was observed. Bioethanol was produced for all conditions considered with the optimum fermentation time of 15 h and ethanol yield of 0.48 g/g sucrose. The need for mixing and temperature control can be eliminated. Using a textile bioreactor at room temperature of 22 °C without mixing required 2.5 times longer retention time to produce bioethanol than at 30 °C with mixing. This will reduce the fermentation investment cost by 26% for an ethanol plant with capacity of 100,000 m 3 ethanol/y. Also, replacing one 1300 m 3 stainless steel reactor with 1300 m 3 of the textile bioreactor in this plant will reduce the fermentation investment cost by 19%.

Keywords: bioethanol; fermentation; bioreactor material; textile bioreactor; reactor cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/11/7555/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/11/7555/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:11:p:7555-7567:d:42459

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().