Impact of flocculant addition in oil recovery from multiphasic fermentations

Emulsion formation is a major concern when dealing with multiphasic fermentations. Flocculants can be used together with other demulsification techniques to improve oil recovery in multiphasic fermentations. In this paper, the impact of adding flocculants during a multiphasic fermentation with 10 wt% dodecane, to destabilize the broth...

Techno-economic assessment of heterotrophic microalgae biodiesel production integrated with a sugarcane bio-refinery

The use of diesel fuel in crop and transportation operations is responsible for one third of the carbon emissions in sugarcane biorefineries. A possible solution is to replace it with biodiesel from lipids, directly produced from sugarcane by highly productive heterotrophic microalgae. In this study a heterotrophic microalgae biodiesel plant,...

Techno-economic assessment of the use of solvents in the scale-up of microbial sesquiterpene production for fuels and fine chemicals

Sesquiterpenes are a group of versatile, 15-carbon molecules with applications ranging from fuels to fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. When produced by microbial fermentation at laboratory scale, solvents are often employed for reducing product evaporation and enhancing recovery. However, it is not clear whether this approach constitutes a...

A mechanistic model for oil recovery in a region of high oil droplet concentration from multiphasic fermentations

Multiphasic fermentations where an organic phase is spontaneously formed or when it is added for product removal are commonly used for production of valuable compounds. The turbulent conditions and the presence of surface-active compounds (SACs) during fermentation create a stable emulsion difficult to separate. A gas bubble/oil droplet...

Integration of Gas Enhanced Oil Recovery in Multiphase Fermentations for the Microbial Production of Fuels and Chemicals

In multiphase fermentations where the product forms a second liquid phase or where solvents are added for product extraction, turbulent conditions disperse the oil phase as droplets. Surface-active components (SACs) present in the fermentation broth can stabilize the product droplets thus forming an emulsion. Breaking this emulsion increases...

Photo-Optical In-Situ Measurement of Drop Size Distributions: Applications in Research and Industry

The exact knowledge of Drop Size Distributions (DSD) plays a major role in various fields of applications to control and optimize processes, as well as reduce waste. In the microbial production of advanced biofuels, oil droplets are produced under turbulent conditions in an aqueous medium containing many surface active components, making DSD...

Process for the recovery of lipids or hydrocarbons

The invention is directed to a method for recovering a lipid or hydrocarbon from a fermentation mixture, comprising the steps of - providing a fermentation mixture wherein the lipid or hydrocarbon is produced by microbial fermentation in a fermentation vessel, which mixture comprises an aqueous phase and a liquid product phase, wherein the...

Feasibility study of an alkaline-based chemical treatment for the purification of polyhydroxybutyrate produced by a mixed enriched culture

This study focused on investigating the feasibility of purifying polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) from mixed culture biomass by alkaline-based chemical treatment. The PHB-containing biomass was enriched on acetate under non-sterile conditions. Alkaline treatment (0.2 M NaOH) together with surfactant SDS (0.2 w/v% SDS) could reach 99% purity, with more...

Towards the integration of fermentation and crystallisation - A study on the production of L-phenylalanine

Industrial biotechnology can be defined as the utilization of living organisms or their enzymes for the industrial production of food, beverages, commodity chemicals and pharmaceuticals, among others. A biotechnological production process, so-called bioprocess, mostly comprises product formation (e.g. by fermentation) and product recovery and...