Sugar beet juice can serve as feedstock for ethanol product due to its high content of fermentable sugars
and high energy output/input ratio. Batch ethanol fermentation of raw juice and thick juice proved that
addition of mineral nutrients could not improve ethanol concentration, but could accelerate the
fermentation rate. Fermentation of thick juice with an initial pH of 9.1 did not affect the fermentation
process. The continuous ethanol fermentation of raw juice was performed at 35 C with a dilution rate of
0.3 h1, resulting in ethanol concentration, ethanol yield and productivity of 70.7 g L1, 89.8% and
21.2 g L1 h1, respectively. A two-stage reactor was used in the continuous ethanol fermentation of thick
juice by feeding fresh yeast cells into the second reactor. This process was stable at a total process
dilution rate of 0.11 h1 with an overall sugar concentration of 190 g L1 in the influent. The ethanol
concentration was kept at approximately 80 g L1, corresponding to ethanol yield of 82.5% and productivity
of 8.8 g L1 h1.