BUTANOL PRODUCTION BY CLOSTRIDIUM ACETOBUTYLICUM IN A SERIES OF PACKED BIOFILM BED REACTORS

摘要

The reactor design plays a key role in the fermentative production of biobutanol. The high cell concentration that may be reached in confined - biofilm, membrane, recycling - cell reactors offers high conversion rates. To the authors knowledge, the concentration of solvents in the broth from biofilm reactors reported in literature is not particularly high and it negatively affects the successive stages for butanol recovery. The low concentration of solvents in the produced stream is typically due to the inhibitory effect of solvents on the fermentation. Therefore, the butanol bioreactor productivity is as low as the bioreactor behaviour approaches the CSTR limit. The aim of this contribution is to report recent results on the design of a continuous biofilm reactor to optimize the process performances.