Intensive Production of Carboxylic Acids Using C. butyricum in a Membrane Bioreactor (MBR)

Abstract

This work reports on the use of a bench-scale chemostat (CSTR) in continuous mode and of a pilot-scale membrane bioreactor (MBR) in fed-batch mode to intensively produce acetic and butyric acids using C. butyricum grown on synthetic media. These studies were then used to perform a cost estimation study of the MBR system to assess the potential economic impact of this proposed methodology, regarding the production of carboxylic acids. The MBR system was found to be highly productive, reaching 37.88 g L−1 h−1 of acetic and 14.44 g L−1 h−1 of volumetric cell productivity, favoring acetic acid production over butyric acid at a ratio of 3 moles to 1. The cost of preparation and production of carboxylic acid using this system was found to be 0.0062 £PS/kg with up to 99% carbon recovery.

A kinetic study on carboxylic acids production using bovine slaughterhouse wastewater: a promising substrate for resource recovery in biotechnological processes

“…1d), indicating high CA productivity in the first days of incubation, short lag time, and, therefore, high performance of the acidogenic microorganisms. There were no temporary inhibitory processes that could be visually recognized in the production curve by periods of stabilization, followed by new exponential phases of production [40].…”