Engineering Commons^™

Abe Fermentation From Low Cost Substrates, Kai Gao

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The high cost of substrate and product inhibition in the fermentation broth remains two major problems associated with bio-butanol production. This thesis aims to solve these problems by examining abundant lignocellulosic biomass as potential feedstocks and exploring novel substrates such as carbohydrates derived from microalgae for ABE fermentation. The commonly observed toxic effect after pretreatment of lignocelluslosic biomass was removed by resin adsorption, where the resin could also serve as an in-situ butanol recvoery devices.

Corn cobs (an agricultural waste), switchgrass (an energy crop) and phragmites (an invasive plant in North America) were investigated as substrates for ABE fermentation by …

Direct Conversion Of Wet Microalgae And Oleaginous Yeast To Biodiesel Using Ionic Liquids, Valerie Orr

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined the development of an oleaginous yeast or microalgae based biorefinery process. First, improvements were made to the Nile Red assay, a high-throughput method for monitoring lipid accumulation in oleaginous organisms resulting in a significantly more reproducible and accurate assay. This assay was then used to optimize lipid production during heterotrophic cultivation of microalgae on glucose using response surface methodology resulting in microalgae with high lipid content (37.6% wt.). In order to improve the renewability of heterotrophic lipid production, both oleaginous yeast and microalgae were cultivated using pyrolytic sugars, produced via fast pyrolysis of pinewood waste. The effects …