Carbon recovery by fermentation of CO-rich off gases – Turning steel mills into biorefineries

Molitor, Bastian; Richter, Hanno; Martin, Michael E.; Jensen, Rasmus O.; Juminaga, Alex; Mihalcea, Christophe; Angenent, Largus T.

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2016.03.094

Cited by 148 publications

(144 citation statements)

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“…One avenue, besides wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, is the conversion of producer gas into chemicals and fuels (Daniell et al, 2016). Producer gas can come from industrial off gases from the steelmaking industry or from gasification of solid organic waste streams (biomass and municipal waste; Munasinghe and Khanal, 2010; Molitor et al, 2016). Producer gas, which we refer to as syngas, is composed of mainly carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H 2 ), and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), with nitrogen, methane, and other compounds at lower concentrations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Biological conversion of syngas with carboxydotrophic bacteria (CTB) is currently receiving attention because of the technology transfer to industrial scales at steel mills (Liew et al, 2016; Molitor et al, 2016). Specifically, Clostridium ljungdahlii and Clostridium autoethanogenum produce ethanol using either CO or H 2 and CO 2 as substrates (Mock et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Narrow pH Range Supports Butanol, Hexanol, and Octanol Production from Syngas in a Continuous Co-culture of Clostridium ljungdahlii and Clostridium kluyveri with In-Line Product Extraction

et al. 2016

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Carboxydotrophic bacteria (CTB) have received attention due to their ability to synthesize commodity chemicals from producer gas and synthesis gas (syngas). CTB have an important advantage of a high product selectivity compared to chemical catalysts. However, the product spectrum of wild-type CTB is narrow. Our objective was to investigate whether a strategy of combining two wild-type bacterial strains into a single, continuously fed bioprocessing step would be promising to broaden the product spectrum. Here, we have operated a syngas-fermentation process with Clostridium ljungdahlii and Clostridium kluyveri with in-line product extraction through gas stripping and product condensing within the syngas recirculation line. The main products from C. ljungdahlii fermentation at a pH of 6.0 were ethanol and acetate at net volumetric production rates of 65.5 and 431 mmol C·L−1·d−1, respectively. An estimated 2/3 of total ethanol produced was utilized by C. kluyveri to chain elongate with the reverse β-oxidation pathway, resulting in n-butyrate and n-caproate at net rates of 129 and 70 mmol C·L−1·d−1, respectively. C. ljungdahlii likely reduced the produced carboxylates to their corresponding alcohols with the reductive power from syngas. This resulted in the longer-chain alcohols n-butanol, n-hexanol, and n-octanol at net volumetric production rates of 39.2, 31.7, and 0.045 mmol C·L−1·d−1, respectively. The continuous production of the longer-chain alcohols occurred only within a narrow pH spectrum of 5.7–6.4 due to the pH discrepancy between the two strains. Regardless whether other wild-type strains could overcome this pH discrepancy, the specificity (mol carbon in product per mol carbon in all other liquid products) for each longer-chain alcohol may never be high in a single bioprocessing step. This, because two bioprocesses compete for intermediates (i.e., carboxylates): (1) chain elongation; and (2) biological reduction. This innate competition resulted in a mixture of n-butanol and n-hexanol with traces of n-octanol.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Narrow pH Range Supports Butanol, Hexanol, and Octanol Production from Syngas in a Continuous Co-culture of Clostridium ljungdahlii and Clostridium kluyveri with In-Line Product Extraction

et al. 2016

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“…Not limited only from gasified lignocellulose, industrial waste gas rich of CO, CO2, and H2 or gas waste from municipal solid waste and agriculture and forestry residue can be utilized as the gaseous substrate to produce biofuels and other value added chemicals [1][2][3][4]. The conversion process is able to be undertaken by two routes, thermochemical route by Fischer Trop reaction (metal catalyst base process) and biochemical route through fermentation by employing acetogenic bacteria [1,5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…that have been studied capable of converting syngas into solvent products are Clostridium ljungdahlii, C. carbodixovorans, C. ragsdalei, and C. autoethanogenum (carboxydotrophic species) [4,9]. These species utilize reductive Acetyl-CoA pathway or Wood-Ljungdahl pathway (WLP) during their growth in the presence of CO/CO2/H2 and generate acetyl-CoA as the key intermediate product for a diverse metabolites production [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These species utilize reductive Acetyl-CoA pathway or Wood-Ljungdahl pathway (WLP) during their growth in the presence of CO/CO2/H2 and generate acetyl-CoA as the key intermediate product for a diverse metabolites production [10]. These strains are categorized into mesophiles as their optimum growth temperature is between 37 o C and 40 o C. C. ljungdahlii and C. autoethanogenum are the common model microorganism for basic research and commercial application [4]. From a comparison study of syngas fermentation between C. ijungdahlii and C. autoethanogenum strains, C. ljungdahlii is revealed to be a more superior ethanol producer than C. autoethanogenum by ethanol titter produced in low pH condition [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bioethanol Production via Syngas Fermentation

et al. 2018

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Abstract. Bioconversion of C-1 carbon in syngas through microbial fermentation presents a huge potential to be further explored for ethanol production. Syngas can be obtained from the gasification of lignocellulosic biomass, by which most of carbon content of the biomass was converted into CO and CO2. These gases could be further utilized by carbon-fixing microorganism such as Clostridium sp. to produce ethanol as the end product. In order to obtain an optimum process, a robust and high performance strain is required and thus high ethanol yield as the main product can be expected. In this study, series of batch fermentation was carried out to select high performance strains for ethanol production. Bottle serum fermentations were performed using CO-gas as the sole carbon source to evaluate the potential of some Clostridia species such as Clostridium ljungdahlii, C. ragsdalei, and C. carboxidovorans in producing ethanol at various concentration of yeast extract as the organic nitrogen source, salt concentration, and buffer composition. Strain with the highest ethanol production in the optimum media will be further utilized in the upscale fermentation.

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Progress and development of syngas fermentation processes toward commercial bioethanol production

Owoade

Alshami

Levin

et al. 2023

Biofuels Bioprod Bioref

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Syngas is created through the thermochemical conversion of biomass using gasification or pyrolysis and from CO‐rich off‐gases obtained from industries such as steel mills. The Wood–Ljungdahl metabolic pathway, or one of its variations, is used by acetogenic bacteria to convert syngas components (CO, H2, and CO2) to alcohols and other compounds. Many factors affect how well syngas is fermented, including the bacteria species used, syngas composition, medium components, bioreactor type, operational parameters used and the gas–liquid mass transfer rate. These parameters impact carbon and electron flow in the bacteria, influencing the distribution, concentration and metabolic end‐product yield, which determines process feasibility. This article focuses on gas composition, microorganisms, gas–liquid mass transfer fermentation strategies, medium design and commercialization activities to develop the syngas fermentation processes.

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Carbon recovery by fermentation of CO-rich off gases – Turning steel mills into biorefineries

Cited by 148 publications

References 60 publications

A Narrow pH Range Supports Butanol, Hexanol, and Octanol Production from Syngas in a Continuous Co-culture of Clostridium ljungdahlii and Clostridium kluyveri with In-Line Product Extraction

A Narrow pH Range Supports Butanol, Hexanol, and Octanol Production from Syngas in a Continuous Co-culture of Clostridium ljungdahlii and Clostridium kluyveri with In-Line Product Extraction

Bioethanol Production via Syngas Fermentation

Progress and development of syngas fermentation processes toward commercial bioethanol production

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