Microbial Consortia: A Mixed Cell Catalyst for Biotransformation of Biomass into Biofuels and Chemicals
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ImprintApple Academic Press
Abstract
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Adding value to waste using environmental biotechnological approaches is a promising concept for its
management. Mixed culture fermentation is the way of utilizing two or more microorganisms as
biocatalyst to produce valuable products from various substrates, including wastes. Mixed culture
fermentation could become an excellent alternative to traditional pure culture-based biotechnology to
enable next generation biofuels and bio-commodity production. This caters the advantages over
application of pure cultures, such as better utilization of the substrate, waste utilization, wider range of
enzymes, ability to attack and convert greater variety of compounds, higher growth rates and product
yield, multistep transformations in a single bioreactor and protection against unwanted contaminants.
This chapter highlights some of the important and recent developments in bio-catalysis 270based on
mixed microbial cultures for biofuel production with a special focus on understanding various factors
that affect the metabolic pathways of mixed cultures fermentation for biofuel production such as ethanol,
butanol, syngas, methane, and hydrogen. The chapter also reviews the technical constraints of the mixed
fermentation process for practical and commercial applications, and applications of genetic engineering
and nanotechnology tools for improving the mixed culture technology.
Keywords
TP Chemical technology