Distillation for in situ recovery of volatile fermentation products.

Many fermentation products inhibit their own microbial production, which complicates industrial-scale fermentation development for these products. When a product is volatile, this inhibition can be circumvented by removing product during fermentation through evaporation in a loop around the bioreactor. Microbes can survive this loop if its temperature is reduced using vacuum.

Ultrasound-assisted emerging technologies for chemical processes.

The chemical industry has witnessed many important developments during past decades largely enabled by process intensification techniques. Some of them are already proven at commercial scale (e.g.

Integrated reactive absorption process for synthesis of fatty esters.

Reactive separations using green catalysts offer great opportunities for manufacturing fatty esters, involved in specialty chemicals and biodiesel production. Integrating reaction and separation into one unit provides key benefits such as: simplified operation, no waste, reduced capital investment and low operating costs. This work presents a novel heat-integrated reactive absorption process that eliminates all conventional catalyst related operations, efficiently uses the raw materials and equipment, and considerably reduces the energy requirements for biodiesel production--85% lower as compared to the base case.