Process for biofuel and biochemical production, culture medium and biofuel and biochemical produced
AssigneeGranBio Intellectual Property Holdings, LLC
InventorsMaria Carolina de Barros Grassi, Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira, Theodora Retsina
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a process and a culture medium for biofuel and biochemical production by fermentation of lignocellulose biomass. The process describes the use of a solid-liquid mixed blend formed by solid fiber pulp, hydrolysate, and a polypeptide complex. The solid fiber pulp is partially degraded by the polypeptide complex allowing microbe immobilization and, at the same time, releasing substances that affect Clostridium quorum sensing pathways. The present process and culture medium allow the improvement of biofuels and biochemical production, as butanol and acetone in an industrial scale.
Claims17
A process for converting lignocellulosic biomass into fermentation products, the process comprising:
- (1) submitting the lignocellulosic material to a pulping process, to obtain pulp;
- (2) submitting additional lignocellulosic biomass and/or fiber pulp to a hydrolysis process, to obtain hydrolysate;
- (3) mixing the pulp from step (1) with the hydrolysate, to obtain a culture medium;
- (4) adding a polypeptide complex into the culture medium;
- (5) adding a fermentative microbe into the culture medium, to obtain a fermentation medium;
- (6) fermenting the fermentation medium to produce fermentation products;
- and (7) recovering the fermentation products, wherein total free sugar concentration in the hydrolysate obtained in step (2) is at least 20 grams (g) of sugar per liter (L) of hydrolysate, and wherein an amount of fiber pulp added to the culture medium in step (3) is at least 2 to 20 times smaller (in g/L) than the total free sugar concentration available in the culture medium (in g/L).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.