The Digest’s 2024 Multi-Slide Guide to Demonstration of continuous biobutanol fermentation integrated with membrane solvent extraction

Isobutanol (IBA), feedstock for an ASTM approved pathway for SAF production, can only be produced at low levels in fermentation (<2%) due to toxicity. Plus, there’s energy intensive recovery to consider – high heat input or high vacuum required to separate from aqueous broth. The goal of this project is to decrease energy use (by 50%) and cooling water use (by 30%) of IBA recovery while using low impact feedstocks to accelerate commercialization of SAF – by demonstrating process to produce 100kg with 100 h of continuous operation. Jesse McVay of ADM gave this presentation on the project at DOE Project Peer Review.