The Kinetics of Ethanol Fermentation Based on Adsorption Processes

Currently, the oil crisis and serious environmental problems related to fossil fuels have caused the world to turn more attention toward biofuels production, especially ethanol fermentation from biomass. An appropriate kinetic model of ethanol fermentation would be a powerful instrument for fermentation efficiency increase and process optimization. The well-known Monod equation has been widely applied and modified to describe different fermentation processes.1–7 Unlike the Michaelis-Menten equation describing the mechanism of enzyme catalysis, the Monod equation is purely empirical with no mechanistic basis and hardly meets functional requirements to support large-scale production, process scale-up and optimization. In this paper, a simple kinetic model of ethanol fermentation is proposed, which provides a new perspective for kinetics research of fermentation.