Bioenergy and Biorefinery: Feedstock, Biotechnological Conversion, and Products.

Biorefinery has been suggested to provide relevant substitutes to a number of fossil products. Feedstocks and conversion technologies have, however, been the bottleneck to the realization of this concept. Herein, feedstocks and bioconversion technologies under biorefinery have been reviewed. Over the last decade, research has shown possibilities of generating tens of new products but only few industrial implementations. This is partly associated with low production yields and poor cost-competitiveness. This review addresses the technical barriers associated with the conversion of emerging feedstocks into chemicals and bioenergy platforms and summarizes the developed biotechnological approaches including advances in metabolic engineering. This summary further suggests possible future advances that would expand the portfolio of biorefinery and speed up the realization of biofuels and biochemicals.

Development and evaluation of consolidated bioprocessing yeast for ethanol production from ionic liquid-pretreated bagasse.

This work aimed to study the use of consolidated bioprocess (CBP) yeast expressing five cellulase genes (BGL, XYNII, EGII, CBHI and CBHII) for ethanol production from ionic liquid-pretreated bagasse and Laubholz unbleached Kraft pulp (LUKP). A proposed screening method shows that the optimal cellulase ratio varies for each biomass substrate, and thus it is essential to breed CBP yeast having optimal cellulase-displaying ratio for the target biomass. CBP yeast specialized towards bagasse produced 0.93g/l ethanol whiles that for LUKP produced 0.71g/l ethanol, which is approximately 4 and 2-fold, respectively, higher than that of the wild type. The cell-surface displayed enzymes synergistically contributed to the degradation of the biomass. The developed CBP yeast is a potential cheap source for consolidated bioprocessing of ethanol and the proposed screening method can be used for matching CBP yeast to a target biomass.

Simultaneous conversion of free fatty acids and triglycerides to biodiesel by immobilized Aspergillus oryzae expressing Fusarium heterosporum lipase.

The presence of high levels of free fatty acids (FFA) in oil is a barrier to one-step biodiesel production. Undesirable soaps are formed during conventional chemical methods, and enzyme deactivation occurs when enzymatic methods are used. This work investigates an efficient technique to simultaneously convert a mixture of free fatty acids and triglycerides (TAG). A partial soybean hydrolysate containing 73.04% free fatty acids and 24.81% triglycerides was used as a substrate for the enzymatic production of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). Whole-cell Candida antarctica lipase B-expressing Aspergillus oryzae, and Novozym 435 produced only 75.2 and 73.5% FAME, respectively. Fusarium heterosporum lipase-expressing A. oryzae produced more than 93% FAME in 72 h using three molar equivalents of methanol. FFA and TAG were converted simultaneously in the presence of increasing water content that resulted from esterification. Therefore, F. heterosporum lipase with a noted high level of tolerance of water could be useful in the industrial production of biodiesel from feedstock that has high proportion of free fatty acids.

Lipase cocktail for efficient conversion of oils containing phospholipids to biodiesel.

The presence of phospholipid has been a challenge in liquid enzymatic biodiesel production. Among six lipases that were screened, lipase AY had the highest hydrolysis activity and a competitive transesterification activity. However, it yielded only 21.1% FAME from oil containing phospholipids. By replacing portions of these lipases with a more robust bioFAME lipase, CalT, the combination of lipase AY-CalT gave the highest FAME yield with the least amounts of free fatty acids and partial glycerides. A higher methanol addition rate reduced FAME yields for lipase DF-CalT and A10D-CalT combinations while that of lipase AY-CalT combination improved. Optimizing the methanol addition rate for lipase AY-CalT resulted in a FAME yield of 88.1% at 2h and more than 95% at 6h. This effective use of lipases could be applied for the rapid and economic conversion of unrefined oils to biodiesel.