Advances in Bioenergy

4. Renewable Feedstocks for Butanol Production

Compared to the petrochemical production, bioproduction of butanol is now still not economically competitive mainly because of the cost of feedstock which takes up to 70% of the total production cost (Gu et al., 2011). In the traditional butanol fermentative production plants, solventogenic clostridia and cereal (such as corn and wheat) are used as fermentation strains and substrates. However, these sugar and starch based substrates are expensive making the fermentation process nonfeasible. Various low cost and renewable feedstocks have been evaluated for ABE fermentation to decrease the production cost (Table 2).

Crops such as Cassava and Jerusalem artichoke, which have been widely planted and rich ...