Fuel ethanol is currently produced in large scale using yeast fermentation of glucose obtained from corn crops and sucrose from sugar cane, the second mainly in Brazil. There has been much interest inimproving ethanol yield during fermentation as well as increasing throughput and decreasing costs. The environmental advantages of ethanol over traditional fuels such as gasoline stem from its renewable nature since it is generated from plants that were recently fixing carbon dioxide, thus negating the greenhouse gas effect. However, regardless of process improvement, there remains a need to find non-edible feedstock for ethanol production. Present day interest in biodiesels has caused significant growth in the sector of biodiesel production. This has, in turn significantly increased glycerol production, as it is the major by-product of biodiesel production. For every 100 lbs of biodiesel produced from transesterification of oil, 10 lbs of glycerol is produced. As a result of this surplus of glycerol, there has been a 10 fold decrease in glycerol price, creating the necessity for a method of treatment for this waste stream of biodiesel production. Glycerol has become an abundant source of carbon that is now equivalent in price to traditional fermentation sugar stocks. A cost analysis of ethanol production from glycerol demonstrates that ethanol from glycerol costs 0.66$/gallon versus 1.05$/ gallon from corn. This is due mainly to complexity of the ethanol production process when corn is used as substrate versus the relative simplicity of the process when glycerol is used as substrate. [Chaudhary N, Ngadi MO, Simpson B (2012) Comparison of Glucose, Glycerol and Crude Glycerol Fermentation by Escherichia Coli K12]
Last date updated on April, 2024
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