2008 Volume 19 Issue 6 Pages 271-277
Butanol is useful as a pour-point depressant in bio-diesel fuel (BDF) and improves its combustion efficiency. Many studies have been done on butanol production using acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation. Several ABE-producing bacteria have been isolated, revealing the metabolic pathway of type strain. Since the utilization of a renewable biomass, such as sago starch wastewater, was seen to reduce the cost of fermentative materials, experiments for ABE fermentation using such renewable biomass have recently been conducted. In addition, extractive ABE fermentation using BDF of methylated vegetable oil as an extractant resulted in the efficient production of butanol. This, in turn, led to the production of a high-quality BDF-containing butanol produced in situ. High-speed, highly efficient butanol production systems have also been developed through the use of various fermentation and bioconversion methods. Studies on the molecular breeding of high butanol-producing bacteria and metabolic analysis of ABE fermentation have also been investigated in the fields of metabolic engineering and bioinformatics, respectively.
