Lipid-based biofuel production from wastewater

摘要: Increasing world population, urbanization and industrialization are driving global increases in wastewater production. Wastewater comprises significant amounts of chemical energy primarily the form organic molecules (in particular lipids), which currently not being recovered comprehensively. Within biological treatment (BWWT) systems, specialized microorganisms assimilate store lipids anaerobically. These intracellular stores represent interesting feedstocks for biofuel synthesis. Here, we review our current understanding genetic functional basis bacterial lipid accumulation processing, relate this to accumulating populations occur naturally BWWT plants. A grand challenge microbial ecologists engineers now lies translating knowledge into design new processes comprehensive recovery from streams their subsequent conversion biofuel.