Pilot-scale production of fuel ethanol from concentrated food waste hydrolysates using Saccharomyces cerevisiae H058

The aim of this study was to develop a bioprocess to produce ethanol from food waste at laboratory, semipilot and pilot scales. Laboratory tests demonstrated that ethanol fermentation with reducing sugar concentration of 200 g/L, inoculum size of 2 % (Initial cell number was 2 x 10(6) CFU/mL) and addition of YEP (3 g/L of yeast extract and 5 g/L of peptone) was the best choice. The maximum ethanol concentration in laboratory scale (93.86 +/- A 1.15 g/L) was in satisfactory with semipilot scale (93.79 +/- A 1.11 g/L), but lower than that (96.46 +/- A 1.12 g/L) of pilot-scale. Similar ethanol yield and volumetric ethanol productivity of 0.47 +/- A 0.02 g/g, 1.56 +/- A 0.03 g/L/h and 0.47 +/- A 0.03 g/g, 1.56 +/- A 0.03 g/L/h after 60 h of fermentation in laboratory and semipilot fermentors, respectively, however, both were lower than that (0.48 +/- A 0.02 g/g, 1.79 +/- A 0.03 g/L/h) of pilot reactor. In addition, simple models were developed to predict the fermentation kinetics during the scale-up process and they were successfully applied to simulate experimental results.