Decarbonizing ethanol production via gas fermentation: Impact of the CO/H₂/CO₂ mix source on greenhouse gas emissions and production costs

This study explores key success factors for ethanol production via fermentation of gas streams, by assessing the effects of eight process variables driving the fermentation performance on the production costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Three fermentation feedstocks are assessed: off-gases from the steel industry, lignocellulosic biomass...

A systematic approach for the processing of experimental data from anaerobic syngas fermentations

This study describes a methodological framework designed for the systematic processing of experimental syngas fermentation data for its use by metabolic models at pseudo-steady state and at transient state. The developed approach allows the use of not only own experimental data but also from experiments reported in literature which employ a...

Multi-Objective Sustainability Optimization of Biomass Residues to Ethanol via Gasification and Syngas Fermentation: Trade-Offs between Profitability, Energy Efficiency, and Carbon Emissions

This work presents a strategy for optimizing the production process of ethanol via integrated gasification and syngas fermentation, a conversion platform of growing interest for its contribution to carbon recycling. The objective functions (minimum ethanol selling price (MESP), energy efficiency, and carbon footprint) were evaluated for the...

Production of ethanol fuel via syngas fermentation: Optimization of economic performance and energy efficiency

In this work, a model was developed to predict the performance of a bubble column reactor for syngas fermentation and the subsequent recovery of anhydrous ethanol. The model was embedded in an optimization framework which employs surrogate models (artificial neural networks) and multi-objective genetic algorithm to optimize different process...

Modeling ethanol production through gas fermentation: A biothermodynamics and mass transfer-based hybrid model for microbial growth in a large-scale bubble column bioreactor

Background: Ethanol production through fermentation of gas mixtures containing CO, CO₂ and H₂ has just started operating at commercial scale. However, quantitative schemes for understanding and predicting productivities, yields, mass transfer rates, gas flow profiles and detailed energy requirements have been lacking in...

Dynamic modeling of syngas fermentation in a continuous stirred-tank reactor: Multi-response parameter estimation and process optimization

Syngas fermentation is one of the bets for the future sustainable biobased economies due to its potential as an intermediate step in the conversion of waste carbon to ethanol fuel and other chemicals. Integrated with gasification and suitable downstream processing, it may constitute an efficient and competitive route for the valorization of...