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In situ extraction offers an effective way to recover products during microbial production of fatty alcohols, which can be operated in multi-cycle mode. Workup steps may be required to increase the driving force for the extraction or to minimize by-product accumulation. Different workup steps, including intermittent glucose addition, dodecane change, and buffer change, were investigated in this study. We demonstrated that reconfiguration of these workup steps (e.g. rare intermittent workup steps) between bioconversion cycles led to significantly improved productivity and sustainability. The optimized reconfiguration enhanced the yield (0.071 g fatty alcohol per g glucose) while reducing the E-factor to 34.98, which was 120-fold lower than that of the control condition without in situ extraction. The results from this work shed light on the sustainable process development of the fatty alcohol production.

Immobilization methods have emerged as feasible solutions for increasing the reusability of biocatalysts and for simplifying their separation from the desired products. Immobilized biocatalysts can directly be applied to a continuous-flow system, such as tubular or packed bed reactors. Such continuous-flow systems with immobilized biocatalysts are promising tools for enhancing the sustainability of bioprocessing. This minireview discusses important considerations for successfully developing biocatalyst-based continuous-flow systems, namely immobilization techniques, mass transfer and reactor design. The key sustainability aspects of these systems are highlighted along with recent examples.

Fatty alcohols are widely used for various applications and are found in products ranging from detergents to cosmetics and cleaning agents Currently, over 3 million tonnes of fatty alcohols are produced per year from bio-based and petroleum-based feedstocks through chemical conversion and synthetic processes However, the environmental impact of current fatty alcohol production processes has become a major concern, and several bioprocesses have emerged as alternative methods for synthesis These biological processes are environmentally friendly due to their metal-free nature, low consumption of energy, and mild reaction conditions This review overviews the current status of fatty alcohol production ? both chemical and biological approaches Our focus is on biological synthesis approaches using biocatalysis and metabolic engineering due to their proven efficacy Potential downstream processing for these bioprocesses is also presented ? 2020 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd