Butanol Production from Cellulosic Biomass and Commercial Feedstocks

Butanol, a superior biofuel to ethanol, can be produced from various commercial substrates such as whey permeate, sugarcane molasses, soy molasses and starch. The strains that can use these feedstocks do not require hydrolytic enzymes. The microbial strains such as Clostridium acetobutylicum, C. beijerinckii , and C. saccharobutylicum can also ferment hexose and pentose sugars such as glucose, xylose, arabinose, mannose, and galactose. These monomeric sugars are part of cellulose or hemicellulose and are obtained after hydrolysis of cellulosic biomass. The authors of this chapter have been successful in developing technologies to ferment various cellulosic biomass such as wheat straw, barley straw, corn stover and sweet sorghum bagasse to butanol. It should be noted that use of inulin requires prior hydrolysis using inulinase enzyme. Substrates such as soy molasses, yellow top, and dried distillers grains and solubles (DDGS) can potentially be used as good feedstocks for this fermentation.