The production of butanol by biological means was first performed by Louis Pasteur in 1861. In 1905, Austrian biochemist Franz Schardinger found that acetone could similarly be produced. In 1910 Auguste Fernbach (1860–1939) developed a bacterial fermentation process using potato starch as a feedstock in the production of butanol.
Industrial exploitation of ABE fermentation started in 1916, during World War I, with Chaim Weizmann's isolation of Clostridium acetobutylicum, as described in U.S. patent 1315585.
The Weizmann process was operated by Commercial Solvents Corporation from about 1920 to 1964 with plants in the US (Terre Haute, IN, and Peoria, IL), and Liverpool, England. The Peoria plant was the largest of the three. It used molasses as feedstock and had 96 fermenters with a volume of 96,000 gallons each.
After World War II, ABE fermentation became generally non-profitable, compared to the production of the same three solvents (acetone, butanol, ethanol) from petroleum. During the 1950s and 1960s, ABE fermentation was replaced by petroleum chemical plants. Due to different raw material costs, ABE fermentation was viable in South Africa until the early 1980s, with the last plant closing in 1983. Green Biologics Ltd operated the last attempt to resurrect the process at scale but the plant closed in Minnesota in June 2019. 
A new ABE biorefinery has been developed in Scotland by Celtic Renewables Ltd and will begin production in early 2022.  The key difference in the process is the use of low value spent materials or residues from other processes removing the variable costs of raw feedstock crops and materials.