Response Surface Optimization of Biobutanol Production from Boiled SUWAN-1-SR Corn Cobs

In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize the conditions during the acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation of hydrolyzed boiled corn cobs to produce biobutanol using Escherichia coli (E. coli). The species of corn used was SUWAN-1-SR and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) was used to find the proportion of biobutanol in the fermentation process of ABE. A three-variable Central Composite Design (CCD) with 20 runs was employed to develop a statistical model for the fermentation process. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the experimental data, and the F-test was used to determine the significance of the model factors. Results showed that the optimal fermentation conditions, which included a maximum temperature of 80.70oC, concentration of 0.46mol/dm3, and duration of 27.20 minutes, gave the best maximum sugar output of 1941.33g/l. A quadratic polynomial function was obtained for biobutanol production using regression analysis. ANOVA showed that both temperature and concentration were highly significant (F-value(cal) < F-value(tab) at 1% significance level) factors in the yield of biobutanol. The effect of time was nonsignificant. There were highly significant interaction effects of temperature and concentration as well as temperature and time in the yield of biobutanol. There was a highly significant F-test for the model, suggesting that the model could be used to predict the response variable accurately. These findings demonstrate that under these ideal circumstances, the E. coli used in this investigation had its maximum metabolic activity.