A Glimpse of the World of Volatile Fatty Acids Production and Application: A review

Abstract

Sustainable provision of chemicals and materials is undoubtedly a defining factor in guaranteeing economic, environmental, and social stability of future societies. Among the most sought-after chemical building blocks are volatile fatty acids (VFAs). VFAs such as acetic, propionic, and butyric acids have numerous industrial applications supporting from food and pharmaceuticals industries to wastewater treatment. The fact that VFAs can be produced synthetically from petrochemical derivatives and also through biological routes, for example, anaerobic digestion of organic mixed waste highlights their provision flexibility and sustainability. In this regard, this review presents a detailed overview of the applications associated with petrochemically and biologically generated VFAs, individually or in mixture, in industrial and laboratory scale, conventional and novel applications.

Evaluation of nutritive values of various non-conventional protein sources as potential feed ingredients for ruminants

“…Table 3 shows the total volatile fatty acid (VFA) Production value and the NH3 value of each feedstuff tested. The production of volatile fatty acids/VFA is an illustration of the increase in soluble carbohydrates and proteins (Agnihotri et al 2022). Based on the analysis of variance that was carried out in Table 3, the nonconventional protein source feed ingredients used had a very significant effect (P>0.01) on VFA concentrations.…”

Towards maximum value creation from potato protein liquor: volatile fatty acids production from fungal cultivation effluent

“…Due to the continuously rising environmental awareness on the excessive application consequences and resource scarcity of global oil sources, new alternative approaches such as VFA generation from low or negative value organic waste has attracted great attention. The generated VFAs through acidogenic fermentation or digestion have market demands in applications such as bioplastics and bioenergy production, external carbon sources for biological nutrient removal, and usage in pharmaceutical and food industries [11][12][13]. Different sources of organic waste including food waste [12,14,15], lignocellulosic materials [16], waste activated sludge [17,18], and various animal manures [19][20][21] have been used as feed stock for acidogenic digestion and VFAs production.…”

Enhanced lactic acid production by Lactobacillus rhamnosus ATCC 7469 through simultaneous saccharification and fermentation from household food waste

“…[6] Despite this process' multiple advantages, its economic viability is limited due to the end-product's low economic added so that alternative processes can be developed to produce higher-value chemicals. Lactic acid (LA), [7] ethanol, [8] acetic acid, [9] propionic acid, [10] and butyric acid [11] have become the target products. Although these products have high added value, from the point of view of biological carbon fixation, there is no loss of carbon source and no release of carbon dioxide in the process of homo-lactic acid metabolism as shown in Equations ( 1)- (6).…”