Microbial Chain Elongation - Carbon Recovering Biorefineries for the Circular Economy

Waste, residues, ‘used products’, and CO2 are crucial inputs to close the carbon loop of our society. For example, organic waste streams are currently digested into methane, which is typically converted into electric power, or flared off. We should convert these materials into new commodity chemicals or circular products to enable the Circular Economy. Robust, cheap, and sustainable catalysts are needed to utilize these large streams in engineered solutions. Biocatalysts, such as microbes, are especially interesting for this. Chain elongation is emerging as a breakthrough resource recovery process within the Circular Economy. A diversity of carbon-elongation pathways enable the bioconversion of short molecules (from C1 compounds onwards) into various carboxylic acids, alcohols, esters, alkanes, and other biochemicals. We can produce microbially chain-elongated biochemicals such as short and medium-chain carboxylic acids by integrating these microbes into bioreactors. These carboxylic acids are separable from the microbial broth and can be used for solvents, bioplastics, biofuels, feed-additive, plant-growth promotion, etc.

In 2021, the Research Topic Microbial Chain Elongation- Close the Carbon Loop by Connecting-Communities provided a frontline collection of research articles. This continuing research topic aims to bring together a new collection of research/review articles on Microbial Chain Elongation to provide an inspiring overview of recent advances and future perspectives. Research on this topic is evolving while various industries are enabling first applications. Microbial chain-elongation processes evolve in several biorefinery platforms. We invite scientists, engineers, industry, and other stakeholders interested in learning about this topic and sharing their insights. We hope to create a ‘Microbial Chain Elongation’ society. By learning more about each other’s work, we can collectively identify knowledge gaps and recognize technological challenges.

This Research Topic welcomes Original Research and Review articles on all bioengineering and biotechnological topics related to microbial chain elongation, including, but not limited to the following:

- Biorefinery development
- Integration in the circular economy
- Bioreactor and separation engineering
- Bioprocess development
- Pilot studies
- Life Cycle Assessment
- Microbiology of microbiomes and biochemistry of pathways
- Pure or mixed culture engineering
- Bioinformatics
- Modelling of processes or systems engineering

Contributors to the 2nd International Chain Elongation Conference at the University of Tubingen are especially welcome to submit their work. This conference will take place from the 2nd-4th November 2022.