Abstract

varied f relatio tion ou for des Holtzapple, 2010b). Carboxylate platform fermentations produce small-chain (C2C7) carboxylic acids, which convert to ethanol, gasoline, jet fuel, or industrial chemicals via well-established chemistry (Holtzapple and Granda, 2009). As feedstocks, the carboxylate platform can use many non-food biomass materials including landfill-targeted wastes such as yard clippings and cts such as paper 04). Furthermore, boxylate platform an initial ions in th ation, elim any energy or material costs associated with sterilization. In the carboxylate platform, carboxylic acids are buffe carboxylate salts (Aiello-Mazzarri et al., 2006). Prior to initiating this project, the few attempts to manipulate the inoculum success-fully improved fermentation performance of the carboxylate plat-form. Terrestrial inocula from environments expected to favor rapid degradation of biomass (e.g., compost pile or ruminant gut) (Fu, 2007) were the original microbial communities for the platform. A noteworthy aspect of these early studies of carboxylate platform fermentations is that the productivity of these original