Microbial Upcycling of Organic Waste to Biofuels and Biochemicals
A special issue of Fermentation (ISSN 2311-5637). This special issue belongs to the section "Industrial Fermentation".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2026 | Viewed by 668
Special Issue Editors
Interests: biomass energy engineering; waste-to-resource technologies; environmental microbial technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: anaerobic digestion; microbial management of organic wastes; biofuels; lignocellulolytic enzyme production
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The management of organic wastes is currently a critical challenge globally. Of specific interest is food waste, agricultural waste, horticultural waste, animal manure, waste-activated sludge, wastewater, algal residues, and other industrial organic residues. Meanwhile, abundant renewable energy and resources remain unharnessed in such organic wastes. Therefore, to overcome the challenge, a large number of studies on microbial fermentation technologies have been conducted to convert various organic wastes to biofuels and biochemicals. For instance, anaerobic digestion of organic wastes can be performed for the production of methane-rich biogas. Acidogenic fermentation of organic wastes can be conducted for the production of carboxylic acids. Fermentation of oleaginous yeast can be carried out for the production of microbial lipids. Additionally, biohydrogen can be obtained through dark fermentation of organic wastes, and polypeptide can be produced from the fermentation of certain pure strains. These studies and related field-scale tests have contributed a lot to improving the sustainability of a circular economy.
To further enhance the process efficiency, studies on some enhancing strategies, such as feedstock pretreatment, microbial bio-augmentation, and supplementation of additives in fermentation bioreactors, have been conducted with promising findings, but the efficiency requires further confirmation in larger-scale fermentation systems. To make the fermentation systems more practical, lifecycle assessment and cost–benefit analysis have been performed to analyze the economic feasibility. The post-treatment of the fermentation liquid also requires more investigation to find the appropriate approaches that can reduce its environmental impacts and treatment cost.
In the global context of circular economy, this Special Issue aims to encourage and advance the research of microbial fermentation technologies for the conversion of various organic wastes into biofuels and biochemicals.
Dr. Le Zhang
Dr. Rouf Ahmad Dar
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- fermentation
- organic wastes
- biochemicals
- biofuels
- bioenergy
- biogas
- biohydrogen
- anaerobic digestion
- acidogenic fermentation
- dark fermentation
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