BACKGROUND n-Butanol is a promising emerging biofuel, and recent metabolic engineering efforts have demonstrated the use of several microbial hosts for its production. However, most organisms have very low tolerance to n-butanol (up to 2% (v/v)), limiting the economic viability of this biofuel. The rational engineering of more robust n-butanol production hosts relies upon understanding the mech...

Autoignition of binary blends of n-butanol and n-heptane was studied in a rapid compression machine at an equivalence ratio of 0.4 and a compressed pressure of 20 bar with the compressed temperature varying from 700 K to 907 K. Within the temperature range covered in this study, no cool flame or negative temperature coefficient behavior was observed for neat n-butanol. With the presence of n-he...

The thermophilic anaerobe Thermoanaerobacterium saccharolyticum JW/SL-YS485 was investigated as a host for n-butanol production. A systematic approach was taken to demonstrate functionality of heterologous components of the clostridial n-butanol pathway via gene expression and enzymatic activity assays in this organism. Subsequently, integration of the entire pathway in the wild-type strain res...

BACKGROUND n-Butanol can serve as an excellent gasoline substitute. Naturally, it is produced by some Clostridia species which, however, exhibit only limited suitability for industrial n-butanol production. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae would be an ideal host due to its high robustness in fermentation processes. Nevertheless, n-butanol yields and titers obtained so far with genetically eng...

Butanol is a sustainable carbon–neutral fuel that can be derived from variety of biomass resources. It potentially used as an alternative to blend with diesel decrease greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. In this paper, three butanol isomers (n-butanol, tert-butanol, iso-butanol) are blended in various volume ratios. The combustion characteristics experimentally determined constant vessel un...

BACKGROUND Butanol isomers are regarded as more suitable fuel substitutes than bioethanol. n-Butanol is naturally produced by some Clostridia species, but due to inherent problems with clostridial fermentations, industrially more relevant organisms have been genetically engineered for n-butanol production. Although the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae holds significant advantages in terms of scal...

The use of oxygenated fuels in spark ignition engines (SIEs) has gained increasing attention in the last few years, especially when coming from renewable sources, due to the shortage of fossil fuels and global warming concern. Currently, the main substitute of gasoline is ethanol, which helps to reduce CO and HC emissions but presents a series of drawbacks such as a low heating value and a high...

Cross-tolerance and antagonistic pleiotropy have been observed between different complex phenotypes in microbial systems. These relationships between adaptive landscapes are important for the design of industrially relevant strains, which are generally subjected to multiple stressors. In our previous work, we evolved Escherichia coli for enhanced tolerance to the biofuel n-butanol and discovere...