| Popis: |
Glycerol is a by-product of transesterification, fat splitting, and saponification processes. The rise in biofuels led to excess glycerol and price volatility. Crude glycerol from the biodiesel and the oleochemical industries contains methanol or other impurities, and constitutes a disposal problem. This waste glycerol has invigorated the development of new processes, both chemical and biological, for crude and refined glycerol valorization. Nature has evolved sophisticated microbial pathways for glycerol uptake and dissimilation. The advancement of genetic engineering has allowed us to capitalize on this opportunity and developed microbial production hosts to manufacture a wide array of value-added chemicals from glycerol, ranging from bulk to fine chemicals. Although there are technical challenges associated with microbial glycerol utilization (feedstock composition, substrate and product inhibition, downstream processing, and process economics, to name a few), strain engineering and bioprocess optimization have empowered us to address some, if not all, of these issues. Therefore, the future for utilizing glycerol as a renewable raw material for biomanufacturing holds great promises. This book chapter seeks to consolidate the advances made in the sector of biological glycerol use, by putting equal weight on our discussions of feedstock (i.e., glycerol) and of microbial cell factory. |
