Jones’
reaction produced butanol in more than 99 percent
selectivity. No undesirable side products are produced.
That would mean a conversation rate of 99 %, which is really good. what’s more important is what is the conversion rate from carbohydrates to ethanol currently ethanol uses C6 sugars and ignores the C5 streams which is over 40% of biomass. some GMO yeasts can use pentoses the holy grail is a bug that digests whole cellulose and hemicellulose directly without pretreatment or enzymes. The ABE bacteria does this but with low efficiency and with a slew of co products plus the bug dies at a low yield in the titier it was only used in war time when no other alternatives were available. There are a number of biofirms trying to tuffen up the bug and breed out all but butanol as a metabolic. right now ethanol uses C6 sugars which are what you me and all other monogastric animals eat also known as food which is immoral to use food for fuel. The genius of butanol is it can be made from stuff we cant eat and the left over cellular biomass is high in protein could be feed to animals as feed.
The conversion selectivity is important, of course, for final product purity, but if it takes two gallons of ethanol to produce one gallon of butanol, then it is not economically worth the effort of using up that much food stock to make a fuel that we are currently awash in thanks to fracking.