Purification of Bioethanol Using Microbubbles Generated by Fluidic Oscillation: A Dynamical Evaporation Model

Ethanologenic fermentation by Parageobacillus thermoglucosidasius with continuous hot microbubble gas-stripping

The increased use of biofuels in place of fossil fuels is one strategy to support the transition to net-zero carbon emissions, particularly in transport applications. However, expansion of the use of 1st generation crops as feedstocks is unsustainable due to the conflict with food use. The use of the lignocellulosic fractions from plants and/or co-products from food production including food wastes could satisfy the demand for biofuels without affecting the use of land and the availability of food, but organisms which can readily ferment all the carbohydrates present in these feedstocks often suffer from more severe bioethanol inhibition effects than yeast. This paper demonstrates the potential of hot gas microbubbles to strip ethanol from a thermophilic fermentation process using Parageobacillus thermoglucosidasius TM333, thereby reducing product inhibition and allowing production to continue beyond the nominal toxic ethanol concentrations of ≤ 2% v/v. Using an experimental rig in which cells were grown in fed-batch cultures on sugars derived from waste bread, and the broth continuously cycled through a purpose-built microbubble stripping unit, it was shown that non/low-inhibitory dissolved ethanol concentrations could be maintained throughout, despite reaching productivities equivalent to 4.7% v/v dissolved ethanol. Ethanol recovered in the condensate was at a concentration appropriate for dewatering to be cost effective and not prohibitively energy intensive. This suggests that hot microbubble stripping could be a valuable technology for the continuous production of bioethanol from fermentation processes which suffer from product inhibition before reaching economically viable titres, which is typical of most thermophilic ethanologenic bacteria.

Continuous removal of ethanol from dilute ethanol-water mixtures using hot microbubbles

Product inhibition is a barrier to many fermentation processes, including bioethanol production, and is responsible for dilute product streams which are energy intensive to purify. The main purpose of this study was to investigate whether hot microbubble stripping could be used to remove ethanol continuously from dilute ethanol-water mixtures expected in a bioreactor and maintain ethanol concentrations below the inhibitory levels for the thermophile Parageobacillus thermoglucosidasius (TM242), that can utilize a range of sugars derived from lignocellulosic biomass. A custom-made microbubble stripping unit that produces clouds of hot microbubbles (~120 °C) by fluidic oscillation was used to remove ethanol from ~2% (v/v) ethanol-water mixtures maintained at 60 °C. Ethanol was continuously added to the unit to simulate microbial metabolism. The initial liquid height and the ethanol addition rate were varied from 10 to 50 mm and 2.1-21.2 g h^-1 respectively. In all the experiments, ethanol concentration was maintained well below the inhibition threshold of the target organism (~2% [v/v]). This microbubble stripping unit has the potential to operate in conjunction with a 0.5-1.0 L fermenter to allow an ethanol productivity of 14.9-7.8 g L^{- 1}h^-1 continuously.

The promising shadow of microbubble over medical sciences: from fighting wide scope of prevalence disease to cancer eradication

Microbubbles are typically 0.5-10 μm in size. Their size tends to make it easier for medication delivery mechanisms to navigate the body by allowing them to be swallowed more easily. The gas included in the microbubble is surrounded by a membrane that may consist of biocompatible biopolymers, polymers, surfactants, proteins, lipids, or a combination thereof. One of the most effective implementation techniques for tiny bubbles is to apply them as a drug carrier that has the potential to activate ultrasound (US); this allows the drug to be released by US. Microbubbles are often designed to preserve and secure medicines or substances before they have reached a certain area of concern and, finally, US is used to disintegrate microbubbles, triggering site-specific leakage/release of biologically active drugs. They have excellent therapeutic potential in a wide range of common diseases. In this article, we discussed microbubbles and their advantageous medicinal uses in the treatment of certain prevalent disorders, including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetic condition, renal defects, and finally, their use in the treatment of various forms of cancer as well as their incorporation with nanoparticles. Using microbubble technology as a novel carrier, the ability to prevent and eradicate prevalent diseases has strengthened the promise of effective care to improve patient well-being and life expectancy.

Fluidic Oscillators Mediating Generation of Microbubbles (Survey)

If a gas volume is distributed into many microbubbles of a sub-millimetre size, the total gas/liquid surface becomes very large. This increases overall heat and/or mass transport across the sum of surfaces. The paper discusses several applications in which the use of microbubbles increases efficiency of various processes, especially in wastewater treatment and in growing microorganisms such as algae, yeast, bacteria, or primitive fungi. The problem of microbubble generation by percolation in aerator is their coalescence into larger bubbles, whatever small are the pores in the aerator in which the microbubbles are generated. The solution of this size discrepancy question was found in agitating the gas flow by a fluidic oscillator prior to its injection through the aerator. The oscillator is a no-moving-part device, simple, inexpensive, resistant to external effects like acceleration or heat, and with long maintenance-free working life.

Microbubble intensification of bioprocessing

Microbubbles have been involved in industrial processing since the 1970s with the introduction of dissolved air flotation into common practice. The turn of the century saw microbubbles become regularly used in medical imaging. But in bioprocessing, only this decade has seen rapid advances in R&D, with some bioprocesses, particularly in wastewater treatment, adopted at full industrial scale, and others at pilot scale, such as anaerobic digestion and fermentation, which is full industrial scale for many biomanufacturing and pharmaceutical processes. This article reviews the methods of microbubble generation only briefly, as it turns out only one generation method, fluidic oscillation through microporous diffusers, has the requisite features for introduction into full scale fermentation processes. Subsequently, six fundamental physicochemical hydrodynamics mechanisms that have been exploited by microbubble innovations in bioprocessing are presented and analyzed, particularly for the roles they play in bioprocessing applications. Some examples are drawn with applications to microalgal and yeast processing, as well as usage in wastewater treatment processes. Because the smallest microbubbles can increase rates in some of these six fundamental processes by several orders of magnitude over conventional processing methods, with the optimal contacting patterns, the promise for wider exploitation in bioprocessing is substantial.

Resonant Pulsing Frequency Effect for Much Smaller Bubble Formation with Fluidic Oscillation

Microbubbles have several applications in gas-liquid contacting operations. Conventional production of microbubbles is energetically unfavourable since surface energy required to generate the bubbles is inversely proportional to the size of the bubble generated. Fluidic oscillators have demonstrated a size decrease for a system with high throughput and low energetics but the achievable bubble size is limited due to coalescence. The hypothesis of this paper is that this limitation can be overcome by modifying bubble formation dynamics mediated by oscillatory flow. Frequency and amplitude are two easily controlled factors in oscillatory flow. The bubble can be formed at the displacement phase of the frequency cycle if the amplitude is sufficient to detach the bubble. If the frequency is too low, the conventional steady flow detachment mechanism occurs instead; if the frequency is too high, the bubbles coalesce. Our hypothesis proposes the existence of a resonant mode or ‘sweet-spot’ condition, via frequency modulation and increase in amplitude, to reduce coalescence and produce smallest bubble size with no additional energy input. This condition is identified for an exemplar system showing relative size changes, and a bubble size reduction from 650 µm for steady flow, to 120 µm for oscillatory-flow, and 60 µm for resonant condition (volume average) and 250 µm for steady-flow, 15 µm for oscillatory-flow, 7 µm for the resonant condition. A 10-fold reduction in bubble size with minimal increase in associated energetics results in a substantial reduction in energy requirements for all processes involving gas-liquid operations. The reduction in the energetic footprint of this method has widespread ramifications in all gas-liquid contacting operations including but not limited to wastewater aeration, desalination, flotation separation operations, and other operations.

Measuring Vapor and Liquid Concentrations for Binary and Ternary Systems in a Microbubble Distillation Unit via Gas Sensors

A cost effective, fast, and accurate technique was needed to measure the vapor composition of a binary system (ethanol-water) and also that of a liquid composition in a ternary system (acetic acid-acetol–water) in a microbubble distillation unit. Cheap TGS-series gas sensors were used for this purpose with both calibrations and measurements carried out in a specially designed chamber. A single parameter polynomial regression was fitted to the binary system, and a two parameter polynomial with an interaction term was fitted to the ternary system. The correlation coefficient, R-squared, was found to be greater than 0.99 for both systems, thus validating the implementation of this novel sensor.