BACKGROUND Clostridium pasteurianum CH4 was used to produce butanol from glycerol. The performance of butanol fermentation was improved by adding butyrate as the precursor to trigger the metabolic pathway toward butanol production, and by combining this with in situ butanol removal via vacuum membrane distillation (VMD) to avoid the product inhibition arising from a high butanol concentration. ...

BACKGROUND Though butanol is considered as a potential biofuel, its toxicity toward microorganisms is the main bottleneck for the biological butanol production. Recently, butanol-tolerant bacteria have been proposed as alternative butanol production hosts overcoming the end product inhibition. One remaining key issue to be addressed is how physicochemical properties such as pH and temperature a...

Butanol is a sustainable carbon–neutral fuel that can be derived from variety of biomass resources. It potentially used as an alternative to blend with diesel decrease greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. In this paper, three butanol isomers (n-butanol, tert-butanol, iso-butanol) are blended in various volume ratios. The combustion characteristics experimentally determined constant vessel un...

BACKGROUND Butanol is regarded as an advanced biofuel that can be derived from renewable biomass. However, the main challenge for microbial butanol production is low butanol titer, yield and productivity, leading to intensive energy consumption in product recovery. Various alternative separation technologies such as extraction, adsorption and gas stripping, etc., could be integrated with aceton...

BACKGROUND Butanol production directly from CO2 in photosynthetic cyanobacteria is restricted by the high toxicity of butanol to the hosts. In previous studies, we have found that a few two-component signal transduction systems (TCSTSs) were differentially regulated in Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 after butanol treatment. RESULTS To explore regulatory mechanisms of butanol tolerance, in this wo...

Butanol, an alcohol which can be produced from biomass sources, has received recent interest as an alternative to gasoline for use in spark ignition engines and as a possible blending compound with fossil diesel or biodiesel. Therefore, the autoignition of the four isomers of butanol (1-butanol, 2-butanol, iso-butanol, and tert-butanol) has been experimentally studied at high temperatures in a ...

BACKGROUND Butanol is an intensively used industrial solvent and an attractive alternative biofuel, but the bioproduction suffers from its high toxicity. Among the native butanol producers and heterologous butanol-producing hosts, Bacillus subtilis 168 exhibited relatively higher butanol tolerance. Nevertheless, organic solvent tolerance mechanisms in Bacilli and Gram-positive bacteria have rel...

Butanol is an important industrial solvent and advanced biofuel that can be produced by biphasic fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum. It has been known that acetate and butyrate first formed during the acidogenic phase are reassimilated to form acetone-butanol-ethanol (cold channel). Butanol can also be formed directly from acetyl-coenzyme A (CoA) through butyryl-CoA (hot channel). Howev...

BACKGROUND n-Butanol is a promising emerging biofuel, and recent metabolic engineering efforts have demonstrated the use of several microbial hosts for its production. However, most organisms have very low tolerance to n-butanol (up to 2% (v/v)), limiting the economic viability of this biofuel. The rational engineering of more robust n-butanol production hosts relies upon understanding the mech...

Ethanol and butanol biosynthesis in Clostridium acetobutylicum share common aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenases. However, little is known about the relative contributions of these multiple dehydrogenases to ethanol and butanol production respectively. The contributions of six aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenases of C. acetobutylicum on butanol and ethanol production were evaluated through inactivation o...