Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to produce yeast, Saccharomyces cereviseae, fromtapioca residue using Stirred Ceramic Membrane Reactor (SCMR). The study was divided into3 parts; enzymatic conversion of starch in tapioca residue to reducing sugar, performance ofceramic membrane for cell filtration and high cell cultivation in SCMR system.The effect of following factors; starch cooking, time course of conversion, amount ofsubstrate and squeezing of tapioca residue, on starch conversion were studied. Pretreatment oftapioca residue with steam cooking resulted in higher yield and sugar concentration, whereassqueezing starch from tapioca residue before adding enzymes reduced the sugar concentration.A suitable amount of tapioca residue used was in the range of 20-25 g in 100 ml of water. Themaximum concentration of sugar at 25.48 g/L and yield at 38.6 % (g reducing sugar/g tapiocaresidue) x100) were obtained when 20 g of steamed tapioca residue (121 o C for 30 min) washydrolyzed with a -amylase 0.2 ml at 70 o C for 60 min and glucoamylase 0.4 ml at 55 o C for 60min, respectively. Adding more tapioca residue and enzyme into the hydrolysate increased thesugar concentration but yield was significantly reduced.To investigate the performance of ceramic membrane for filtration of yeast cellsuspension, the effects of cell concentration, membrane pore size and applying air spargingthrough the filter were studied. Permeate flux decreased with increasing in cell concentration. The membrane with bigger pore size gave higher flux, however, at high cellconcentration (200 g/L) the permeate flux of membrane with pore sizes of 1, 5 and 10 m m werenot different. Applying air sparging through the ceramic filter was found to increase thepermeate flux due to removing of cell deposition on membrane surface.The SCMR system used for cell culture in this equipment was fitted with two sets (6tubes) of ceramic filter having pore size of 5 m m. The function of ceramic filters betweenfiltration and aeration of each set was alternatively switched every 15 min. At dilution rate of0.2 and 0.25 h -1 , the permeation flux reduced considerably at the early period of cultivation.Therfore, the lower dilution rates have to be adjusted to maintain the culture volume infermentor. The higher productivity and yield were obtained when the glucose concentration offeed medium fed into the fermentor were increased step by step. Cell concentration at 136 g/Land productivity at 2.48 g/L-h were obtained when cultured the cell at dilution rate of 0.1 h -1 for55 h with increasing the glucose concentration from 40 g/L at 12 h to 70 and 100 g/L at 23 hand 38 h, respectively. The similar result was observed when the hydrolysate of tapioca residue(instead of glucose) was used as a carbon source.