Production of acetone butanol (AB) from liquefied corn starch, a commercial substrate, using Clostridium beijerinckii coupled with product recovery by gas stripping

A potential industrial substrate (liquefied corn starch; LCS) has been employed for successful acetone butanol ethanol (ABE) production. Fermentation of LCS (60 g l-¹) in a batch process resulted in the production of 18.4 g l-¹ ABE, comparable to glucose: yeast extract based medium (control experiment, 18.6 g l-¹ ABE). A batch fermentation of LCS integrated with product recovery resulted in 92% utilization of sugars present in the feed. When ABE was recovered by gas stripping (to relieve inhibition) from the fed-batch reactor fed with saccharified liquefied cornstarch (SLCS), 81.3 g l-¹ ABE was produced compared to 18.6 g l-¹ (control). In this integrated system, 225.8 g l-¹ SLCS sugar (487 % of control) was consumed. In the absence of product removal, it is not possible for C. beijerinckii BA101 to utilize more than 46 g l-¹ glucose. A combination of fermentation of this novel substrate (LCS) to butanol together with product recovery by gas stripping may economically benefit this fermentation.