Sugar fermentation: C4 platforms

Abstract

By the start of the 21st century, biobutanol attracted interests as a drop-in liquid fuel that can be produced from renewable carbohydrate resources. A wide range of research studies dedicated to reviving the old acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation. ABE fermentation has been widely utilized all over the world at commercial scale during World War I and World Ward II for its acetone production but lost its economic vitality in the competition with petrochemical industry. In the search for a sustainable route from renewable resources to liquid biofuels, ABE fermentation attracted interests for n-butanol production. With such a unique industrial background, ABE fermentation has been targeted by some companies to be revived as an industrial process. Furthermore, the development of recombinant stains for the production of isobutanol had promising results and commercialized by two American companies. In this chapter, different aspects of microbial production of n-butanol and isobutanol are presented. © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.