(510d) Generating Widely Applicable Systems-Scale Insights into Fermentation Titer-Rate-Yield

Industrial fermentation is widely used to manufacture products of commercial interest and shows promise to advance the sustainable production of biofuels and bioproducts. For an emerging fermentation technology to be successfully commercialized, financially viable performance must be achieved through advancements in fermentation titer, rate or productivity, and yield (TRY), which represent key drivers of biorefinery sustainability. However, owing to complex interactions between fermentation and the rest of the biorefinery, there is a lack of generalizable insight into how fermentation performance influences system cost under diverse biorefinery designs, technological performance characteristics, and contextual parameters. In this study, we used BioSTEAM (an open-source platform) to design, simulate, and evaluate (by techno-economic analysis, TEA) 32 biorefineries (from combinations of distinct choices for feedstocks, fermentation regimes and products, separations, and catalytic upgrading) across the theoretical fermentation performance space (formed by all potential combinations of TRY) under uncertainty. Further, we proposed generally applicable mathematical expressions that robustly captured how fermentation performance influences system cost (R² of 0.991−1.000 for the TEA results from this work and 0.954−1.000 for TEA results from previous studies that used Aspen Plus or SuperPro Designer). We leveraged the proposed mathematical expressions to elucidate key drivers—among biorefinery design decisions and uncertainties in technological and contextual parameters—that influence the relationship between fermentation performance and system cost, generating widely applicable insights. Finally, we leveraged the proposed mathematical expressions to develop new objective functions for automated prototyping regimes in fermentation research and development. Overall, the conclusions from this study illustrate how agile and robust system analysis frameworks can elucidate salient trends and prioritize fermentation research and development needs.