Minimization of Bacterial Contamination with High Solid Loading during Ethanol Production from Lignocellulosic Materials

Abstract

Ethanol is the most important renewable fuel in the transportation sector. Its production from lignocellulosic materials, commonly referred to as second generation ethanol, is considered more attractive than production from starch and sugar crops. Bacterial contamination by lactic acid-producing bacteria is still a major problem during ethanol production processes. Bacteria compete with the yeast by consuming the sugars and the nutrients required by the yeast for efficient ethanol production. This often causes substantial economic losses at industrial fermentations. In this study, without any sterilization of the substrate, simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) was performed using cellulase Cellic® Ctec2 enzyme for hydrolysis and Baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, was used as the fermenting organism with different loads of suspended solids - 8%, 10% and 12%. With8%and 10% SS, there was a significant contamination, which caused consumption of both hexoses pentose sugars in the fermentation medium, this resulted in lactic acid concentrations of 43 g/L and 36 g/L from 10% SS and 8% SS respectively. In contrast, only 2.9 g/L lactic acid was observed with 12% SS. An ethanol concentration of 47 g/L was produced from high solid loading of 12% SS while just 26 g/L and 23 g/L were produced from 10% and 8% SS respectively. Our results show that SSF with 12% SS has an increased concentration of inhibitors, particularly acetic acid which selectively inhibited the bacterial growth without affecting the metabolic activities of the yeast during the fermentation.