Researchers scale-up hydrogen and ethanol production from engineered bacteria
17 May 2021
Researchers in Mexico have used a genetically engineered Escherichia coli to scale-up the co-production of hydrogen (H2) and ethanol (EtOH) using hemicellulosic hydrolysates from wheat straw pretreated (WSP) as substrate from a 0.01 to 10 L process. A paper on their work is published in the journal Fuel.
Co-production of biofuels was performed through the redirection of carbon-flux to ethanol by deleting ldhA (D-lactate dehydrogenase) and frdD (fumarate reductase) genes in an H2-overproducer strain (E. coli WDH). Resulting strain, E. coli WDH-LF (ΔhycA ΔfrdD ΔldhA), increased up to 70% and 167% the H2 and EtOH production from glucose compared with the parenteral strain.
Using WSP as substrate, the yields of H2 and EtOH remained constant at all the evaluated scales.
—Lopez-Hidalgo et al.
| 10 L Bioreactor | |||
| Max production | Production rate | Yield | |
| H2 | 5,603.0 ± 233.5 mL H2/L | 41.4 ± 4.0 mL H2/L/h | 342.7 ± 14.3 mL H2/g TRS |
| EtOH | 7.90 ± 0.28 g EtOH/L | 0.48 ± 0.01 g EtOH/g TRS | |
Resources
Angel M. Lopez-Hidalgo, Victor E. Balderas Hernandez, Antonio De Leon-Rodriguez (2021) “Scale-up of hydrogen and ethanol co-production by an engineered Escherichia coli,” Fuel, Volume 300 doi: 10.1016/j.fuel.2021.121002.
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