| Abstract: | Ethanol production with bacteria . Strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae have mostly been used for the production of ethanol from sugar by yeasts. Recently it was shown that the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis has some advantages compared to yeast for the production of industrial alcohol. Compared to traditional yeast fermentation, ethanol yield is about 5% higher than with yeast, since less sugar is incorporated into cell material by this bacterium. Like yeast, Zymomonas mobilis has remarkably high ethanol tolerance which enables the bacterium to produce ethanol concentrations of more than 13 vol.-% from sugar solutions of appropriate concentration. Investigations of the spectrum of lipids present have shown that this bacterium contains large quantities of hopanoids which are presumably of significance for the stabilization of cell membranes in the presence of ethanol. Since the cost of the sugar greatly influences the profitability fraction formed in the production of glucose syrup from wheat flour was investigated. It was shown that after enzymatic saccharification of this waste starch the glucose was efficiently fermented to ethanol by Zymomonas mobilis. It is planned to broaden the substrate spectrum of Zymomonas mobilis by gene cloning techniques so that in future pentoses, e. g. xylose or arabinose, can also be fermented to ethanol by this organism. |
