Syngas fermentation is attracting widespread interest for implementation
in biorefineries and great efforts are being made to
metabolically engineer microorganisms for the production of
specifically targeted chemicals. Organic waste has been demonstrated
to have the potential for producing a high quality syngas
when microwave-induced pyrolysis is used as the main thermochemical
route. CO has been found to be the main carbon substrate
for fermentation by bacteria and the microwave heating to be the
most efficientmeans of producing a syngas with high CO/CO2 ratios,
which are even greater than 4 when straw and the organic fraction
of municipal solid waste (dried and partially cleaned of inert solids)
are used. The plastics fraction of the municipal solid waste has been
found to be unsuitable for syngas production, since its fossil-based
nature leads to significant amounts of hydrocarbons and aromatics
in the composition of the gas produced, which can be highly damaging
to the bacteria. Except in this case, microwaves have been
demonstrated to drastically reduce the hydrocarbons and aromatics
content of the syngas produced. Furthermore, the gas obtained
from microwave pyrolysis contains exceptionally high H2 concentrations,
which amount to 49 vol% in the case of straw pyrolysis.
This H2 could be used by bacteria as an energy source or remain as a
valuable by-product for future use. To sum up, microwave-induced
pyrolysis has been confirmed to be a highly useful technology for
producing syngas for use as in the production of bioplastics, due
to its high gas production potential,