Hebei Key Laboratory of Applied Chemistry, School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, Hebei, 066004, People's Republic of China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, People's Republic of China.
Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2017 Sep;101(17):6575-6586. doi: 10.1007/s00253-017-8441-z. Epub 2017 Aug 2.
The mixed culture fermentation is an important environmental biotechnology that converts biodegradable organic wastes to valuable chemicals such as hydrogen, methane, acetate, ethanol, propionate, and so on. For the multistep process of hydrolysis, acidogenesis, acetogenesis/homoacetogensis, and methanogenesis, the typical metabolic reactions are firstly summarized. And then, since the final metabolites are always a mixture, the separation and purification processes are necessary to couple with anaerobic fermentation. Therefore, several typical coupling technologies including biogas upgrading, two-stage fermentation, gas stripping, membrane technology of pervaporation, membrane distillation, electrodialysis, bipolar membrane electrodialysis, and microbial fuel cells are summarized to separate the metabolites and recover energy. At last, the novel technologies such as the controlled metabolite production, medium chain carboxylic acid production, and high temperature ethanol recovery in thermophilic mixed culture fermentation are also reviewed. However, the novel concepts are still needed to meet the demands of better overall performances and lower total costs.
混合培养发酵是一种重要的环境生物技术，可将可生物降解的有机废物转化为有价值的化学物质，如氢气、甲烷、乙酸盐、乙醇、丙酸盐等。对于水解、产酸、产乙酸/同型产乙酸和产甲烷等多步过程，首先总结了典型的代谢反应。由于最终代谢物通常是混合物，因此需要与厌氧发酵相耦合的分离和纯化过程。因此，总结了几种典型的耦合技术，包括沼气升级、两段发酵、气体汽提、渗透蒸发膜技术、膜蒸馏、电渗析、双极膜电渗析和微生物燃料电池，以分离代谢物并回收能量。最后，还综述了嗜热混合培养发酵中控制代谢产物生产、中链羧酸生产和高温乙醇回收等新技术。然而，仍需要新的概念来满足更好的整体性能和更低总成本的需求。
