Butanol is the bigger, better cousin of ethanol when it comes to replacing gasoline as a transportation fuel. It has a higher energy density, is immiscible in water, is noncorrosive, and can be blended with gasoline at higher concentrations than ethanol. Synthetic routes to produce butanol from renewable feedstock, however, suffer from low yields.
Biobutanol is produced by fermenting biomass via microorganisms such as Clostridium pasteurianum. Since its discovery a century ago, this process has been plagued with difficulties. One problem is that once a certain concentration is reached during fermentation (about 2%), the butanol becomes toxic to the microorganisms used to make it, which limits the amount of fuel that can be produced in one batch. Designer microbes have been engineered for better butanol tolerance, but the yield is still very low. A second, related problem is the high energy cost of recovering butanol from the fermentation broth.
Chemists at the Univ. of Rochester and the Univ. of Ottawa are taking a different approach. Instead of producing butanol directly from...
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