Abstract
Some of genus Clostridium bacteria are natural producers of biobutanol via acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation. Butanol is recognized as an alternative fuel for many years. Unfortunately, biobutanol production is tedious and requires constant process control and monitoring due to strict requirements with respect to sterility, anaerobic atmosphere, and other factors. Furthermore, butanol is a well-known ABE fermentation inhibitor and its accumulation in the fermentation broth often results in cell death. Conventionally, gas chromatography or high-performance liquid chromatography is used for analysis of butanol in fermentation products. Even though the methods are highly efficient, they are tedious, expensive, and time-consuming. Within this study we designed a rapid and low-cost qualitative screening approach to determine metabolic product formation in ABE fermentation within 10 minutes using spectrophotometry and salting-out. The method allowed to determine butanol at concentrations > 3 % in samples containing fermentation broth and other solvents. The results demonstrated that after the set-up of test conditions, spectrophotometric ABE detection can be used as rapid screening tool in fermentation studies and butanol production monitoring.
