ABSTRACT
Second generation biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass or agricultural wastes have many advantages over the first generation biofuel produced from food crops. For instance, most second generation biofuels are considered to be able to deliver substantial greenhouse gas emissions reductions when compared with petrol [1, 2]. Acetone, butanol, and ethanol (ABE) are produced from several biomass wastes such as palm oil waste, domestic waste, abundant agriculture crops by fermentation process [3-5]. Considering the important effect of substrate cost on economic feasibility of ABE production, efficient utilization of lignocellulosic wastes instead of costly food-based substrates like corn and molasses has been suggested to make the ABE production economical [5-8]. In the literature, experimental studies have been reported on the production of ABE by using bacterial culture [4, 9, 10]. The mathematical modeling studies describing the kinetics of the production are very few [11]. In the present study, it is proposed to develop kinetic model for the production of ABE from fermentation of starch and starch-based packing peanuts by Clostridium beijerinckii.
