Microbial production of butanol from food industry waste

Abstract This chapter deals with food wastes that were, until now, neglected as potential feedstocks for fermentative butanol production. These feedstocks can be classified as fruit, vegetable, and other crop processing wastes, flour processing wastes or mill by-products, mixtures of unsold retail food or food unconsumed in households and public facilities, and brewery or distillery waste. They are briefly described, the other topics include acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation process, production strains used, ways of food waste pretreatment prior the fermentation, potentially derived fermentation inhibitors and fermentation arrangements. Batch, continuous and co-culture fermentation processes are discussed and compared. The integration of butanol recovery stage with the production stage is presented as well.