Bioconversion of Biomass for Effective Production of Biofuels as Well as Biobased Chemicals and Materials

A special issue of Fermentation (ISSN 2311-5637). This special issue belongs to the section "Industrial Fermentation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 September 2024 | Viewed by 1725

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Basic Science, College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University, 2-11-1 Shinei, Narashino, Chiba 275-8575, Japan
Interests: biomass conversion; fermentation; synthetic biology; environmental microbiology; microbial isolation; enzymes

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, from the perspectives of carbon neutrality and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, intensive studies have been conducted to develop technologies to convert biomass into fuels, chemicals, materials, etc. Biomass conversion technologies range from simple ones that use biomass as an energy source through combustion to more advanced ones that produce biofuels as well as biobased chemicals and materials through enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation. Moreover, the level of achievement of these technologies ranges from the basic research stage to the demonstration stage to the practical application stage. On the other hand, many kinds of biomass have not yet been effectively utilized, and many of the existing conversion technologies have problems such as high production costs. An economical business model can be created through the development of biomass conversion technologies that overcome these problems, which contributes to the formation of a recycling-based society.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to present current achievements, challenges, and prospects in biomass conversion technology for the effective production of biofuels as well as biobased chemicals and materials. Such studies include, but are not limited to, the identification and effective utilization of novel microorganisms, metabolic engineering of microorganisms, pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass, microbial fermentation of biofuels as well as biobased chemicals and materials, improved fermentation technology for yield improvement as well as the production and characterization of novel biobased chemicals and materials.

Dr. Hironaga Akita
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • biomass conversion
  • enzymatic hydrolysis
  • microbial identification
  • metabolic engineering
  • microbial fermentation
  • biofuel
  • biobased chemicals and materials
  • industrial biotechnology

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 801 KiB  
Article
Simultaneous Saccharification and Fermentation for Isobutanol Production from Banana Peel
by Hironaga Akita, Shodai Shibata, Tomoe Komoriya, Shinnosuke Kamei, Hiromichi Asamoto and Masakazu Matsumoto
Fermentation 2024, 10(3), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/fermentation10030161 - 12 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1026
Abstract
Each year, near 40 million tons of banana peels are discarded around the world. This plant biomass could potentially be utilized for energy production. Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) is an effective method for producing biofuels from plant biomasses. Since SSF with enzymatic [...] Read more.
Each year, near 40 million tons of banana peels are discarded around the world. This plant biomass could potentially be utilized for energy production. Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) is an effective method for producing biofuels from plant biomasses. Since SSF with enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation are performed simultaneously in the same reactor, the production process is simpler than most existing methods. Here, we describe isobutanol production using SSF with hydrothermally treated banana peel samples and an Escherichia coli strain able to utilize glucose and xylose to produce isobutanol. To enhance the glucose and xylose concentrations, the reaction conditions for the enzymatic hydrolysis of plant biomass using two kinds of saccharification enzymes were optimized, including the enzyme unit ratio, reaction temperature and sample gram. When the optimized conditions for enzymatic hydrolysis were applied to SSF, the glucose and xylose produced from the hydrothermally treated samples were consumed, producing isobutanol. Moreover, the isobutanol concentration increased with an increasing initial culture pH, reaching 1.27 g/L at pH 6.5, which was consistent with the optimal initial culture pH for isobutanol production by this E. coli strain. Taken together, these results indicate that the established method is potentially useful for industrial isobutanol production. Full article
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