The sustainable production of solvents from above ground carbon is highly desired. Several clostridia naturally produce solvents and use a variety of renewable and waste-derived substrates such as lignocellulosic biomass and gas mixtures containing H₂/CO₂ or CO. To enable economically viable production of solvents and biofuels such as ethanol and butanol, the high productivity of continuous bioprocesses is needed. While the first industrial-scale gas fermentation facility operates continuously, the acetone–butanol–ethanol (ABE) fermentation is traditionally operated in batch mode. This review highlights the benefits of continuous bioprocessing for solvent production and underlines the progress made towards its establishment. Based on metabolic capabilities of solvent producing clostridia, we discuss recent advances in systems-level understanding and genome engineering. On the process side, we focus on innovative fermentation methods and integrated product recovery to overcome the limitations of the classical one-stage chemostat and give an overview of the current industrial bioproduction of solvents.

人们非常希望利用地上碳可持续生产溶剂。一些梭菌自然产生溶剂并使用各种可再生和废物衍生的底物，例如木质纤维素生物质和含有 H ₂ /CO ₂或 CO 的气体混合物。为了经济上可行地生产溶剂和生物燃料（例如乙醇和丁醇），高生产率需要连续的生物过程。虽然第一个工业规模的气体发酵设施连续运行，但丙酮-丁醇-乙醇（ABE）发酵传统上以间歇模式运行。这篇综述强调了连续生物工艺对溶剂生产的好处，并强调了其建立所取得的进展。基于产生溶剂的梭菌的代谢能力，我们讨论了系统级理解和基因组工程的最新进展。在工艺方面，我们专注于创新的发酵方法和集成产品回收，以克服经典的一级恒化器的局限性，并概述当前溶剂的工业生物生产。