Modeling of the substrate and product transfer coefficients for ethanol fermentation

Abstract

The transfer phenomena of the substrate and product for ethanol fermentation with immobilized biocatalyst were investigated. Fermentation was carried out with a biocatalyst consisting of Ca-alginate gel in the form of two-layer spherical beads in anaerobic conditions. The determination of kinetic parameters was achieved by fitting bioreaction progress curves to the experimental data. The calculation of the diffusion coefficients was performed by numerical methods for experimental conditions. Finally, the glucose and ethanol transfer coefficients are defined and determined, using the effective diffusion coefficients.