ACCELERATED CELLULOSIC ETHANOL PRODUCTION USING CONTINUOUS CASCADE FERMENTATION AND ENGINEERED THERMOPHILIC BACTERIA

We aim to show a > 2-fold reduction in the reaction time required to achieve high conversion compared to conventional batch processing.The overall Phase I objective is to demonstrate and evaluate cascade continuous fermentation as a means of accelerating consolidated bioprocessing. The demonstration will be performed with lignocellulose feedstocks derived from corn, either corn stover or a mixture of stover and kernels containing at least 50% stover. For processing corn stover at 10 to 12.5 weight % solids, we anticipate reducing the reaction time from about 7 days in batch (Table 2) to about 3.5 days.