Biobutanol

BP has investments in an ethanol plant with DuPont and Associated British Foods. It is also investing in cellulosic ethanol research and developing jatropha as a biodiesel feedstock. BP and DuPont are planning a biobutanol demonstration plant and BP would like to eventually convert their ethanol plant to biobutanol production. BP has a 400 million investment with Associated British Foods and DuPont to build a bioethanol plant in the U.K. that may be converted to biobutanol. It has spent 500 million over 10 years at the Energy Biosciences Institute in California to research future biofuels and 9.4 million over 10 years to fund the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in India to study the production of biodiesel from Jatropha curcas. It also has a 160 million joint venture with D1 Oils to develop the planting of Jatropha curcas. 

The alternative pathway is the biochemical route. It processes starches/sugars into ethanol, a standard technology with installations world-wide, but in a biorefinery the start is the whole-plant material or biomass residues containing hemicel-lulose, which is broken into sugars that then can be fermented to ethanol and/or other alcohols such as butanol. As mentioned before, there is the need to develop novel and/or improved biocatalysts for alternative organic fuels, such as biobutanol, by fermentation processes. 

Biobutanol is a fuel of the future. It can be made by the fermentation of almost any form of biomass - grain, straw, leaves etc. a But-l-ene can be obtained from alkanes such as decane, C10H22, by cracking. 

Butanol (Biobutanol) Butyl alcohol, sometimes used as a solvent. In the form of biobutanol, it is an... 

Leonard, E. and Prather, K.J. 2008. De novo biocatalyst design An alternative strategy for the petroleum-free synthesis of biobutanol. Chemical Engineering, MIT, 77 Massachusetts ave.. Bldg 66 25, Boston, MA 02139 (The 30th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, May 2008). 

Biobutanol is also an attractive biofuel with superior fuel properties but this application has not yet been established in the market. Biobutanol fits the existing fuel infrastructure it has a higher energy density (similar to petrol/gasoline) and better performance than bioethanol. In addition, butanol can be dehydrated to 1-butene and catalyzed into longer-chain oligomers for jet-fuel applications. Biobutanol can substitute for both ethanol and biodiesel in the biofuel market estimated to be 247 billion by 2020 [177]. 

Genome sequence of Clostridium acetobutylicum GXAS18-1, a novel biobutanol production strain. Genome Announc., 3, e00033-15. 

Ehsaan, M., Kuit, W., Zhang, Y., Cartman, S.T. et al. (2016) Mutant generation by allelic exchange and genome resequencing of the biobutanol organism Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824. Biotechnol. Biofuels, 9, 4. 

Kuroda, K. and Ueda, M. (2016) Cellular and molecular engineering of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for advanced biobutanol production. FEMS Microbiol Lett., 363, fnv247. 

Pam, Schools, Butamax Advanced Biofuels Prt esses Plans to Bring Biobutanol to Market, www.butamax.com (accessed November 2010). 

Mascal M (2012) Chemicals from biobutanol technologies and markets. Biofuel Bioprod Biorefining 6(4) 483-493... 

Other possible fuels (Fig. 2.38) include biobutanol, biogasoline, biomethane (biogas), various furans (2,5-dimethylfuran, 5-ethoxymethylfurfural) and terpene derivatives (e.g. RJ-4). All of these have advantageous properties and some economic potential in certain application areas. 

The industrial production of biobutanol started in 1916 as a fermentation process using bacteria Clostridia acetobutylicum (39). This type of fermentation has been addressed as acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation and is used with molasses and cereal grains. The materials used for ABE fermentation are detailed in Table 11.2. 

Various modes of fermentation processes for the production of biobutanol have been examined, e.g., batch, fed-batch, and continuous processes (40). 

Biobutanol is now regarded as a biofuel of the second generation (45). It has been analyzed that butanol performs equally as well as ethanol in a direct-injection spark-ignition engine from the view of regulated emissions and combustion, however with the advantage... 

The technologies and markets for chemicals from biobutanol have been reviewed (50,56). Apart from fuel applications, butanol can be used as (40) ... 

The production of hydrogen through steam reforming of a biobutanol using supported cobalt-based catalysts has been described (57,58). A Co-Ir/ZnO catalyst is a good choice to optimize the... 

T.S. Jeong, W. Choi, J. Lee, and K.K. Oh, Production of biobutanol from hydrolysate of red algae (gelidium amansii) treated with acid saccharification, Clearwater Beach, Florida, US, 2010. 32nd Symposium on biotechnology for fuels and chemicals. 

Fermentative Biobutanol Production An Old Topic with Remarkable Recent Advances... 

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