On-farm solid state simultaneous saccharification and fermentation of whole crop forage rice in wrapped round bale for ethanol production

BACKGROUND: In an attempt to reduce environmental loading during ethanol production from cellulosic plant biomass, we have previously proposed an on-site solid state fermentation (SSF) method for producing ethanol from whole crops, which at the same time provides cattle feed without producing wastes. During the ensiling of freshly harvested plant biomass with cellulase and glucoamylase, the added yeast and lactic acid bacteria induced simultaneous saccharification and production of ethanol and lactic acid in hermetically sealed containers on-farm. In a previous study, laboratory-scale SSF (using 250 g of fresh rice crop biomass) yielded 16.9 weight % ethanol in dry matter (DM) after 20 days of incubation. In this study, the fermentation volume was scaled up to a normal-sized round bale and the fermentation process (ethanol concentrations of the products) was monitored. The ethanol produced was recovered and the recovery efficiency was evaluated. RESULTS: SSF tests with forage rice round bales using polyethylene-wrapped whole plant materials (cultivar Leaf Star, average of 125.2 kg dry weight) were monitored in the field without temperature control. They yielded 14.0 weight % ethanol and 2.9 weight % lactic acid in DM after six months of incubation, and the ethanol ratio in the bale remained stable for 14 months after processing. SSF tests with three different rice cultivars were conducted for three years. Ethanol recovery from a fermented whole bale (244 kg fresh matter (FM) containing about 12.4 kg ethanol) by one-step distillation using vacuum distillation equipment yielded 86.3% ethanol collected from distilled solution (107 kg of 10.0 weight % ethanol). In addition, an average of 1.65 kg ethanol in 40.8 kg effluent per bale was recovered. Relative nitrogen content was higher in SSF products than in silage made from the same plant material, indicating that fermentation residue, whose quality is stabilized by the lactic acid produced, can be used as cattle feed. CONCLUSIONS: We have successfully demonstrated an efficient on-site ethanol production system with non-sterilized whole rice crop round bale. However, issues concerning the establishment of the ethanol recovery procedure on-site and evaluation of the fermentation residue as cattle feed have to be addressed.