关键词: 丁酸, 发酵法, 丁酸梭菌, 工艺运行方式, 代谢途径

Abstract: Butyric acid is an important industrial chemicals, which has been used widely in food additives and pharmaceutical industry. Nowadays, butyric acid production in industry scale is dominated by chemical synthesis with starting materials derived from crude oil. Compared with organic chemical synthesis, the advantage of microbial fermentation include wide material sources, low energy consumption in fermentation, environmentally friendly, sustainable production with sustainable adding material. The production of butyric acid through microbial fermentation has generated  a favorable business climate. Five issues of butyric acid production with bacteria through fermentation were presented in this review, including the characters of butyric acid, the characters of the butyrate-producing strains, the metabolic pathway and regulation of the butyrate-producing strains, the process of producing butyric acid by fermentation, the utilization of butyrate-producing bacterias and their products. These were good indicatiors for the genetic-engineering of the butyrate-producing bacterias and the optimization of the production process.

Key words: butyric acid, fermentation method, Clostridium butyricum, process mode, metabolic pathway