Authors
Kamil Charubin
Publication date
2021
Institution
University of Delaware
Description
Our demand for energy is steadily growing, and despite the current abundance and low cost of fossil fuels, the reserves of petroleum, coal, and natural gas are quickly being depleted. As a result, new technologies capable of utilizing low value feedstocks, like biomass, and waste gasses (H 2, CO, CO 2) must be developed to meet our need for fuels. A new and interesting solution is to utilize the capabilities of organisms found in nature. One example is solventogenic Clostridium acetobutylicum, which can utilize a wide variety of sugar substrates, most notably 6-C and 5-C monosaccharides, as well as complex polysaccharides like hemicellulose (a major component of biomass) to produce solvents acetone, butanol, and ethanol in the process known as the Acetone-Butanol-Ethanol (ABE) fermentation. Unfortunately, in microbial fermentations at least 33% of the sugar-substrate carbon is lost as CO 2 during pyruvate …
Total citations