What is it about?

Seawater-based fermentation is the main step towards applying 'Marine Fermentation' The main purpose of marine fermentation is to introduce an alternative source of water and biomass for industrial biotechnology in order to reduce pressure on use of freshwater and arable land, allowing these resources to be dedicated to production of food and feeds an reducing production costs. Marine fermentation is the approach where seawater, marine biomass and marine microorganisms are used in the fermentation process Water is a key element in the fermentation process in the production of Bioethanol, a sustainable fuel derived from maize or sugar cane. Currently, it has an extremely high-water footprint with an estimated 1,388 to 9,812 litres of freshwater consumed for every litre of bioethanol produced. Seawater is a freely available and plentiful resource, and contains a spectrum of minerals, some of which have to be added to freshwater. The fermentation process using seawater also produces salt and freshwater as bi-products adding to economic benefits of the process. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30660-x

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Why is it important?

By applying marine fermentation, seawater will replace freshwater for biomass production, biomass hydrolysis and fermentation media preparation. The concept of marine fermentation was initially introduced in 2014 by Zaky et al. Thus, using seawater in fermentations could potentially improve the overall economics of the process and make a strong impact on overcoming freshwater, food and energy crises.

Perspectives

Using seawater instead of freshwater for bioethanol production will reduce the WF of bioethanol and potentially convert this process from a high water consuming process to a water producing process. On industrial scale, bioreactors usually contain around 12% ethanol, 12% of solids and 74% water by the end of ethanol fermentation. Theoretically, if seawater was used in the fermentation, roughly 7 litre of freshwater can be obtained with each litre of ethanol produced. The produced water will be of very high quality and therefore can be used in industries that require high quality water or it can be used to enhance lower quality water to produce acceptable drinking water. Further advantages of using seawater in the fermentation for bioethanol production include; a) the minerals in seawater will potentially reduce the need for adding minerals to the fermentation media, b) the production of sea salt as a by-product, c) producing salted animal feed that can be used to eliminate the cost of adding minerals to the animal diets. In addition, the salt content in seawater is not favourable for terrestrial microorganisms and therefore may play a role as a selective agent against microbial contamination in biorefineries, especially for the production of baker’s yeast where contamination is a major limiting factor. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-30660-x

Dr Abdelrahman Zaky
University of Nottingham

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This page is a summary of: The establishment of a marine focused biorefinery for bioethanol production using seawater and a novel marine yeast strain, Scientific Reports, August 2018, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-30660-x.
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