Developing a Novel Temperature Responsive Sponge Extractive Bioreactor for 2-Phenylethanol Production by Saccharomyces Cerevisiae

2-Phenylethanol (2-PE) is widely used in the cosmetics and perfumery for fragrancemodification with rose-like fragrance. Every year about 10 000 tons of 2-PE are produced worldwide,the most of which through chemical synthesis. But the chemical production of 2-PE is detrimental to theenvironment and health. Therefore, legislations of the US and EU have restricted the use of chemical2-PE in cosmetics and food products. Therefore, how to replace the 2-Phenylethanol by the chemicalsynthesized has become the trend of industrial development. Microbial fermentation for2-phenylethanol production would be a good alternative due to its relatively lower in cost andenvironmental friendly. Yeast fermentation utilizing the Ehrlich pathway convertingL-phenylalanine to 2-phenylethanol becomes promising in literature. However, synergistic inhibitionof product and ethanol to 2-PE formation is the main challenge for yeast fermentation. In situproduct removal technique has been adopted to reduce the toxicity of 2-phenylethanol to cells inliterature. Nevertheless, higher energy cost in 2-PE product recovery is still a challenge.Thus, in this study the temperature responsive PDMS sponge extractive fermentation isproposed to extract product and ethanol at the same time. Product recovery could be achieved underlower temperature to reduce the energy cost. We believe that an economical competitive process canbe achieved by this study for 2-PE production.