Advanced bioprocessing strategies for biobutanol production from biomass

Abstract

Biobutanol production as a renewable and sustainable biofuel is gaining interest in replacing non-renewable and depleting petrol fuel. In addition to its superior characteristics over bioethanol as a fuel in transportation, butanol is also in demand as a chemical substituent for various industries. Therefore, many researchers have investigated to produce biobutanol at a low cost by considering suitable feedstock material and bioprocessing technologies. Renewable materials such as starch, lignocellulosic, and algal biomass are some of the common feedstock utilized for biobutanol production, and each of them has its own advantages. The limitations of the conventional batch fermentation have been overcome by several fermentation operations and integrated bioprocessing technologies, which had improved biobutanol production efficiency. The success of fermenting biomass into biobutanol relies on the suitability of fermentation operation to correlate with the microbial behavior together with bioprocessing strategies in order to improve the whole process to be viable for industrial scale. Therefore, this review discusses the bioprocessing technologies and suitable strategies that have endeavored to enhance biobutanol production from renewable biomass.