title: Low-Carbon Fuel and Chemical Production by Anaerobic Gas Fermentation.
abstract: World energy demand is expected to increase by up to 40% by 2035. Over this period, the global population is also expected to increase by a billion people. A challenge facing the global community is not only to increase the supply of fuel, but also to minimize fossil carbon emissions to safeguard the environment, at the same time as ensuring that food production and supply is not detrimentally impacted. Gas fermentation is a rapidly maturing technology which allows low carbon fuel and commodity chemical synthesis. Unlike traditional biofuel technologies, gas fermentation avoids the use of sugars, relying instead on gas streams rich in carbon monoxide and/or hydrogen and carbon dioxide as sources of carbon and energy for product synthesis by specialized bacteria collectively known as acetogens. Thus, gas fermentation enables access to a diverse array of novel, large volume, and globally available feedstocks including industrial waste gases and syngas produced, for example, via the gasification of municipal waste and biomass. Through the efforts of academic labs and early stage ventures, process scale-up challenges have been surmounted through the development of specialized bioreactors. Furthermore, tools for the genetic improvement of the acetogenic bacteria have been reported, paving the way for the production of a spectrum of ever-more valuable products via this process. As a result of these developments, interest in gas fermentation among both researchers and legislators has grown significantly in the past 5 years to the point that this approach is now considered amongst the mainstream of emerging technology solutions for near-term low-carbon fuel and chemical synthesis.
authors.affiliation: LanzaTech Inc., 8045 Lamon Ave, Suite 400, Skokie, IL, 60077, USA.|School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Daniell
authors.affiliation: LanzaTech Inc., 8045 Lamon Ave, Suite 400, Skokie, IL, 60077, USA.
authors.forename: Shilpa
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nagaraju
authors.affiliation: LanzaTech Inc., 8045 Lamon Ave, Suite 400, Skokie, IL, 60077, USA.
authors.forename: Freya
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Burton
authors.affiliation: LanzaTech Inc., 8045 Lamon Ave, Suite 400, Skokie, IL, 60077, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Köpke
authors.affiliation: LanzaTech Inc., 8045 Lamon Ave, Suite 400, Skokie, IL, 60077, USA. sean@lanzatech.com.
authors.forename: Séan Dennis
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Simpson
mesh_terms: D001421:Bacteria, Anaerobic / Q000378:metabolism*; D056804:Biofuels / Q000382:microbiology*; D019149:Bioreactors / Q000382:microbiology*; D002244:Carbon / Q000378:metabolism; D003246:Conservation of Energy Resources / Q000379:methods; D005285:Fermentation; D005740:Gases / Q000378:metabolism*; D006859:Hydrogen / Q000378:metabolism*; D008954:Models, Biological; D059205:Renewable Energy
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels; D005740:Gases; D002244:Carbon; D006859:Hydrogen
keywords: Acetogens; Biofuels; Clostridia; Gas fermentation; Synthesis gas; Wood–Ljungdahl pathway