Reviving the Weizmann process for commercial n-butanol production

Ngoc Phuong Thao Nguyen (1, 2, 3) , Céline Raynaud (4) , Isabelle Meynial Salles (1) , Philippe Soucaille (1, 4, 5)

1 LISBP - Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Systèmes Biologiques et des Procédés
2 TBI - Toulouse Biotechnology Institute
3 School of Medicine
4 Biopôle Clermont-Limagne
5 BBSRC EPSRC Synthetic Biological Research Center SBRC, School of Life Science

Developing a commercial process for the biological production of n-butanol is challenging as it needs to combine high titer, yield, and productivities. Here we engineer Clostridium acetobutylicum to stably and continuously produce n-butanol on a mineral media with glucose as sole carbon source. We further design a continuous process for fermentation of high concentration glucose syrup using in situ extraction of alcohols by distillation under low pressure and high cell density cultures to increase the titer, yield, and productivity of n-butanol production to the level of 550 g/L, 0.35 g/g, and 14 g/L/hr, respectively. This process provides a mean to produce n-butanol at performance levels comparable to that of corn wet milling ethanol plants using yeast as a biocatalyst. It may hold the potential to be scaled-up at pilot and industrial levels for the commercial production of n-butanol.

Mots clés: butyl alcohol

Mots clés: butanol; clostridium acetobutylicum; fermentation continue

Domaines: Biotechnologies

Ngoc Phuong Thao Nguyen, Céline Raynaud, Isabelle Meynial Salles, Philippe Soucaille. Reviving the Weizmann process for commercial n-butanol production. Nature Communications, 2018, 9 (1), 8 p. ⟨10.1038/s41467-018-05661-z⟩. ⟨hal-01883880⟩