Improving lipid production from bagasse hydrolysate with Trichosporon fermentans by response surface methodology

Oleaginous yeast Trichosporon fermentans was proved to be able to use sulphuric acid-treated sugar cane bagasse hydrolysate as substrate to grow and accumulate lipid. Activated charcoal was shown as effective as the more expensive resin Amberlite XAD-4 for removing the inhibitors from the hydrolysate. To further improve the lipid production, response surface methodology (RSM) was used and a 3-level 4-factor Box–Behnken design was adopted to evaluate the effects of C/N ratio, inoculum concentration, initial pH and fermentation time on the cell growth and lipid accumulation of T. fermentans. Under the optimum conditions (C/N ratio 165, inoculum concentration 11%, initial pH 7.6 and fermentation time 9 days), a lipid concentration of 15.8 g/L, which is quite close to the predicted value of 15.6 g/L, could be achieved after cultivation of T. fermentans at 25 °C on the pretreated bagasse hydrolysate and the corresponding lipid coefficient (lipid yield per mass of sugar, %) was 14.2. These represent a 32.8% improvement in the lipid concentration and a 21.4% increase in the lipid coefficient compared with the original values before optimization (11.9 g/L and 11.7). This work further demonstrates that T. fermentans is a promising strain for lipid production and thus biodiesel preparation from abundant and inexpensive lignocellulosic materials.