New Energy Source Form Agricultural Waste-Bioethanol Production by Co-Cultured-Cell System and a Novel Bioreactor(II)

Demanding of alternative energy sources for petroleum shortage have prompted increasing interest in fermentative production of ethanol from renewable resources.. Cellulose and starch are major constituents of agricultural waste. The degradation of these two substances is exclusively biological in ecosystems. There are many microbial cell systems for conversion of biomass to fuels has been discussed. The recent studies showed co-immobilized-cell system had highly potential to achieve better ethanol productivity than system with free cells, separately immobilized cells, and enzyme. Over the last few years, the new application of co-immobilized mixed cultures for fermenting of cellulose to ethanol had been approached. Among these, the scale-up production of ethanol by fermentation has raised great interest because the increased demand for new sources of energy. It not only solves the environmental pollution by agriculture waste, but also the production of new biomass energy. This proposal is a continuation of a National Science Council project「New Energy Source form Agricultural Waste-Bioethanol production by Co-cultured-cell system and a Novel BioreactorⅠ」. We have great harvest in the project including (1) the co-immobilized-cell system have been set up and worked, (2) the practical application for co-immobilized-cell system has been well established, and (3) the optimal co-immobilization cultural conditions have been established. This year, the second year of this two-year project, we will investigate the optimal production condition and the operation model by this technology platform. The new designed bioreactor will be able to biotransform agricultural waste to ethanol fermentation broth in high-yield and quickly. The final purpose is to develop a new co-immobilized-cell system for dealing agricultural waste (starch and rice straw) rapidly, and transform them into useful biomass energy – ethanol simultaneously. Moreover, the equipment and cost should be reduced as low as possible. By combination and coherence of different high technology with high efficiency and low cost, we can predict the tremendous potential of this biomass energy production technology platform.

Project ID:PB9907-10770
External Project ID:NSC99-2221-E182-048