Developments in Fermentative Butanol Production as an Alternative Biofuel Source

Abstract

Biobutanol is an attractive, economical, and sustainable alternative fuel to petroleum oil which are depleting in sources due to the diminishing oil reserves and creating an increase in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Alternative routes to sustainable bacterial fermentation for the production of biobutanol are being sought and prepared for commercialization. The challenges for implementing an economically competitive fermentation process for biobutanol production include the availability of cheaper feedstock by improvement toward large-scaled production, improvement of fermentation efficiency, and better strategies for solvent recovery. The development of biobutanol production was analyzed and various methods to increase the fermentative butanol production were discussed in detail. It was found that the implementations of metabolic engineering of the Clostridia sp., advanced fermentation techniques, and utilization of renewed substrates are among the potential and economically viable technology in the production butanol production. Besides, this review outlines several challenges and potential future work for the advancement of fermentative butanol production.