Engineering Commons^™

Biobutanol Production From Cellulosic And Sugar-Based Feedstock From The Corn Plant, Reyna Gomez-Flores

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, biobutanol production by biological fermentation was investigated from the corn plant, integrating two approaches. The first one was to utilize corn cobs, a cellulosic-based material. The second, using a new sugar-based material, sugarcorn juice. Utilizing suitable Clostridia strains for each substrate, these approaches converged into a biorefinery concept to produce renewable biofuels in Ontario, Canada. The corn cob pretreatment was carried out by a dilute acid method resulting in temperature as the variable with most significant effect towards glucose liberation. The enzymatic hydrolysis was performed utilizing a very low concentration of an enzymatic stock solution with approximately …