Abstract
The biotechnological production of fuel and chemicals from renewable, organic carbon-rich substrates offers a sustainable way to meet the increasing demand for energy.
Highlights
Fossil-based fuels in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas remain the source of 80% of the world's energy, but they strongly contribute to global warming.[1]
“CO2-reducing acetogen” or a “homoacetogen” takes acetylCoA biochemical pathway for the formation of acetic acid as fermentation product from CO2.33,34 here we studied the utilization of the in situ CO2 produced during acidogenic cofermentation of cheese whey and brewery-spent grains (BSG) for an enhanced biosynthesis of microbial metabolites, at the same time to limit the release of CO2 into the environment
Production performance was investigated by varying the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of cheese whey (CW) (20, 30, and 40 g COD per L) while maintaining a xed BSG content (35 g volatile solids (VS))
Summary
Fossil-based fuels in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas remain the source of 80% of the world's energy, but they strongly contribute to global warming.[1]. H2 production via electrolysis of water, steam reforming of natural gas followed by cracking oil products, coal gasi cation remains the main route, whereas less energydemanding biological processes for hydrogen production are considered a promising alternative, which have garnered increasing attention.[6] Dark fermentation/acidogenic fermentation is a versatile process capable of efficiently converting various organic substrates (waste/wastewater) to bio-hydrogen (bio-H2) under ambient temperature and pressure.[3,6,7,8] The added advantage of acidogenic fermentation is co-production of short-chain carboxylic acids (SCCA), including acetic (C2), propionic (C3), butyric (C4), and valeric (C5) acids, which can serve as platform chemicals for industrial applications.[9,10] The demand for volatile fatty acids (VFAs), including the above SCCA, is expected to increase over the coming years due to their numerous applications as fuel precursors, as well as in pharmaceutical, and household chemical formulations.[2,11] While global production of chemicals doubled over the past two decades, reaching 2.3 billion tons in 2017, only 2% of them were bio-based. Switching from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy remains a challenge, but it represents a necessary step to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals
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