Effect of chemical pretreatments on corn stalk bagasse as immobilizing carrier of Clostridium acetobutylicum in the performance of a fermentation-pervaporation coupled system

In this study, different pretreatment methods were evaluated for modified the corn stalk bagasse and further used the pretreated bagasse as immobilized carrier in acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation process. Structural changes of the bagasses pretreated by different methods were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared, crystallinity index and scanning pictures by electron microscope. And the performances of batch fermentation using the corn stalk based carriers were evaluated. Results indicated that the highest ABE concentration of 23.86 g/L was achieved using NaOH pretreated carrier in batch fermentation. Immobilized fermentation-pervaporation integration process was further carried out. The integration process showed long-term stability with 225-394 g/L of ABE solvents on the permeate side of pervaporation membrane. This novel integration process was found to be an efficient method for biobutanol production.