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Biomass-derived volatile fatty acid platform for fuels and chemicals

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Abstract

The typical biorefinery platforms are sugar, thermochemical (syngas), carbon-rich chains, and biogas platforms, each offering unique advantages and disadvantages. The sugar platform uses hexose and pentose sugars extracted or converted from plant body mass. The thermochemical (syngas) platform entails a chemical or biological conversion process using pyrolysis or gasification of plants to produce biofuels. The carbon-rich chains platform is used to produce biodiesel from long-chain fatty acids or glycerides. In the present work, we suggest a new platform using volatile fatty acids (VFAs) for the production of biofuels and biochemicals production. The VFAs are short-chain fatty acids composed mainly of acetate and butyrate in the anaerobic digestion (AD) process, which does not need sterilization, additional hydrolysis enzymes (cellulose or xylanase), or a high cost pretreatment step. VFAs are easily produced from almost all kinds of biomass with low lignin content (terrestrial, aquatic, and marine biomass) by the AD process. Considering that raw material alone constitutes 40∼80% of biofuel production costs, biofuels made from VFAs derived from waste organic biomass potentially offer significant economical advantage.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 305-701, Korea

    Ho Nam Chang, Nag-Jong Kim, Jongwon Kang & Chang Moon Jeong

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  1. Ho Nam Chang
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  2. Nag-Jong Kim
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  3. Jongwon Kang
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  4. Chang Moon Jeong
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Correspondence to Ho Nam Chang.

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Both authors contributed equally.

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Chang, H.N., Kim, NJ., Kang, J. et al. Biomass-derived volatile fatty acid platform for fuels and chemicals. Biotechnol Bioproc E 15, 1–10 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-009-3070-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-009-3070-8

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