• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.451-458
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• 1992

Pervaporation which is capable of removing ethanol selectively was adopted to reduce the ethanol inhibition and in situ recovery of ethanol in ethanol fermentation, The composite membrane made of silicone and polysulfone was used to separate the ethanol selectively. The ethanol selectivity of the membrane was about 4 and the total flux was 300 g/m2 h at 301:: and 10 mmHg for 25 g/l of feed concentration. Saccharomyces cerevisiae entrapped within Ca-alginate gels was employed for ethanol fermentations in a fluidized-bed bioreactor. The pervaporation membrane unit and fluidized-bed bioreactor were combined into one system. The proposed model equations for the combined system showed good accordances with the experimental results. It was found from the simulation results that the ethanol concentration in the broth for the combined system was lower than that for the continuous fermentation system without a membrane unit. Ethanol productivity can be thus increased by employing the combined system.