Brandon Lewis, Ph.D.
Biofuels Technical Services Manager, Kemin Biofuels
Moderator:
John Nelson
Vice President, Operations, Marketing & Sales
BBI International
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Bioethanol production from renewable resources such as corn, milo, and sugar cane utilizes fermentation to convert starches and sugars to ethanol. Monitoring fermentations for starches, sugars, and organic acids during bioethanol production is required to ensure efficient conversion of these starting materials to ethanol. Typically, conversion efficiency is followed over time using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) by evaluating DP4+ (dextrins), DP3 (maltotriose), maltose, glucose, and ethanol with the goal of converting all sugars into ethanol. The relative health of yeast can also be followed by HPLC measurement of glycerol, lactic acid, and acetic acid. The majority of laboratories associated with the bioethanol plant follow these compounds utilizing HPLC with ion-exclusion/ion exchange columns, isocratic sulfuric acid mobile phase, and a Refractive Index Detector (RID); however, the brand of column, concentration of sulfuric acid in the mobile phase, mobile phase flow rate, column temperature, and RID detector temperature varies between ethanol manufacturing facilities. This presentation will discuss the literature on the analytical methods used to monitor the fermentation process and provide new data from experiments performed by Kemin Biofuels on the effects of HPLC parameters on the separation of these important indicators of ethanol fermentation efficiency.
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