Process Design and Optimization of Novel Wheat‐Based Continuous Bioethanol Production System

Abstract

A novel design of a wheat-based biorefinery for bioethanol production, including wheat milling, gluten extraction as byproduct, fungal submerged fermentation for enzyme production, starch hydrolysis, fungal biomass autolysis for nutrient regeneration, yeast fermentation with recycling integrated with a pervaporation membrane for ethanol concentration, and fuel-grade ethanol purification by pressure swing distillation (PSD), was optimized in continuous mode using the equation-based software General Algebraic Modelling System (GAMS). The novel wheat biorefining strategy could result in a production cost within the range of dollars 0.96-0.50 gal(-1) ethanol (dollars 0.25-0.13 L(-1) ethanol) when the production capacity of the plant is within the range of 10-33.5 million gal y(-1) (37.85-126.8 million L y(-1)). The production of value-added byproducts (e.g., bran-rich pearlings, gluten, pure yeast cells) was identified as a crucial factor for improving the economics of fuel ethanol production from wheat. Integration of yeast fermentation with pervaporation membrane could result in the concentration of ethanol in the fermentation outlet stream (up to 40 mol %). The application of a PSD system that consisted of a low-pressure and a high-pressure column and employing heat integration between the high- and low-pressure columns resulted in reduced operating cost (up to 44%) for fuel-grade ethanol production.

Assessment of the Brazilian potential for the production of enzymes for biofuels from agroindustrial materials

“…Arifeen et al [53] performed an economic analysis of a continuous bioethanol production plant, using wheat as feedstock, applying a biorefinery concept. The authors included in the analysis the separation and sales of by-products (branch-rich pearling, gluten, and pure yeast cells) and the on-site submerged production of enzymes by a fungal strain, observing beneficial effects of both strategies in the process economics.…”

Enrichment of fermentation media and optimization of expression conditions for the production of EAK16 peptide as fusions with SUMO

“…Data from previous publications (Arifeen et al, 2007;Du et al, 2008;Ernst et al, 1997) have been used to quantitate the approximate amount of recombinant proteins that could be produced per year operation of a wheat-based biorefinery. Arifeen et al (2007) presented a design and cost estimation study of a wheat-based biorefinery for the production of bioethanol in which a plant producing 10 million gal of bioethanol per year would require 96,075 tons of wheat and would generate 11,676 tons of gluten.…”

“…Arifeen et al (2007) presented a design and cost estimation study of a wheat-based biorefinery for the production of bioethanol in which a plant producing 10 million gal of bioethanol per year would require 96,075 tons of wheat and would generate 11,676 tons of gluten. Du et al (2008) has presented detailed material balances for the production of a gluten hydrolysate containing 3.2 g/L FAN from 1 kg of wheat.…”

Microbial biodegradable plastic production from a wheat-based biorefining strategy

“…A wheat-based biorefining strategy has been proposed for the production of a spectrum of chemicals with significant economic improvements [13,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Koutinas et al [33] presented various alternative schemes of the generic biorefining concept, depending on the targeted product (i.e.…”