B.S. Chemical Engineering, 2007
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The development of new microbes with greater tolerance toward the final fuel product, e.g., butanol, could lead to substantial improvements in the cost effectiveness of producing biofuels from cellulosic biomass. We propose to engineer enhanced tolerance toward butanol into E. coli and solventogenic organisms, including yeast and Clostridia sp. By building upon previous studies in our laboratory showing that the effects of product inhibition during acetone-butanol fermentations can be reduced by extractive fermentation, an extractive fermentation system will be set up and used to optimize in situ product removal in fed-batch fermentations by the high solvent-producing strains. Higher intrinsic butanol tolerance combined with extractive fermentation is expected to result in extremely high production rates and volumetric productivities of biobutanol.