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Long-term Operation of Continuous Culture of the Hyperthermophilic archaeon, Thermococcus onnurineus for Carbon Monoxide-dependent Hydrogen Production

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  • Bioprocess Engineering
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Abstract

In this study, we performed a kinetic analysis of CO-dependent H2 production by metabolically engineered Thermococcus onnurineus NA1, MC01 in terms of the cell activity as well as mass transfer rate. We conducted continuous cultures with varying dilution rate, CO flow rate, or agitation speed. Despite oscillations in cell density, the cultures reached steady states at all operating conditions. As the dilution rate increased from 0.1 to 0.3 h−1, specific activity of H2 production (SAHP) and volumetric cell production rate were linearly increased. Also, the SAHP remained almost constant at the fixed dilution rate of 0.3 h−1 even though the CO transfer rate was changed by adjusting the CO flow rate or the agitation speed. This relationship could be expressed as a typical Luedeking-Piret model, implying that high cell density culture with a sufficient growth rate is essential to obtain higher H2 productivity. On the other hand, more elevated CO transfer at the same dilution rate improved H2 production rate (HPR) by the increase of the cell density, not in the rise of SAHP. Through the continuous culture, 108 mmol/g-cell/h and 121 mmol/L/h of SAHP and HPR, respectively, could be achieved at a dilution rate of 0.3 h−1 with CO supply rate of 0.07 vvm and agitation speed of 700 rpm. Considering high H2 production activity and long-term stability of the strain over 1,000 h, MC01 is confirmed to have an outstanding potential for CO-dependent H2 production.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grant from the KIOST in house program (PE99722), the Sogang University Research Grant of 2017 (201710069.01), Chonnam National University (Grant number: 2019-0206), and the C1 Gas Refinery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2015M3D3A1A01064884).

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Neither ethical approval nor informed consent was required for this study.

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Author notes

  1. Seung Seob Bae

    Present address: Current address: National Marine Biodiversity Institute of Korea, Seocheon, 33662, Korea

  2. Tae Wan Kim and Seung Seob Bae contributed equally to this article.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, 61186, Korea

    Tae Wan Kim

  2. Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, Busan, 49111, Korea

    Seung Seob Bae, Sung-Mok Lee, Hyun Sook Lee, Jung-Hyun Lee & Sung Gyun Kang

  3. Department of Marine Biotechnology, Korea University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34113, Korea

    Hyun Sook Lee, Jung-Hyun Lee & Sung Gyun Kang

  4. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul, 04107, Korea

    Jeong-Geol Na

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Kim, T.W., Bae, S.S., Lee, SM. et al. Long-term Operation of Continuous Culture of the Hyperthermophilic archaeon, Thermococcus onnurineus for Carbon Monoxide-dependent Hydrogen Production. Biotechnol Bioproc E 25, 485–492 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-020-0005-x

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