Metabolic modeling of synthesis gas fermentation in bubble column reactors
Author(s)
Chen, Jin; Henson, Michael A; Gomez, Jose Alberto; Hoeffner, Kai; Barton, Paul I.
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Background
A promising route to renewable liquid fuels and chemicals is the fermentation of synthesis gas (syngas) streams to synthesize desired products such as ethanol and 2,3-butanediol. While commercial development of syngas fermentation technology is underway, an unmet need is the development of integrated metabolic and transport models for industrially relevant syngas bubble column reactors.
Results
We developed and evaluated a spatiotemporal metabolic model for bubble column reactors with the syngas fermenting bacterium Clostridium ljungdahlii as the microbial catalyst. Our modeling approach involved combining a genome-scale reconstruction of C. ljungdahlii metabolism with multiphase transport equations that govern convective and dispersive processes within the spatially varying column. The reactor model was spatially discretized to yield a large set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) in time with embedded linear programs (LPs) and solved using the MATLAB based code DFBAlab. Simulations were performed to analyze the effects of important process and cellular parameters on key measures of reactor performance including ethanol titer, ethanol-to-acetate ratio, and CO and H[subscript 2] conversions.
Conclusions
Our computational study demonstrated that mathematical modeling provides a complementary tool to experimentation for understanding, predicting, and optimizing syngas fermentation reactors. These model predictions could guide future cellular and process engineering efforts aimed at alleviating bottlenecks to biochemical production in syngas bubble column reactors.
Date issued
2015-06Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical EngineeringJournal
Biotechnology for Biofuels
Publisher
BioMed Central
Citation
Chen, Jin, Jose A. Gomez, Kai Hoffner, Paul I. Barton, and Michael A. Henson. “Metabolic Modeling of Synthesis Gas Fermentation in Bubble Column Reactors.” Biotechnology for Biofuels 8, no. 1 (December 2015).
Version: Final published version
ISSN
1754-6834