Waste to Bioplastic Conversion by the Moderate Halophilic Bacterium Halomonas Boliviensis

• Main Authors: M. Garcia-Torreiro, T. Lu-Chau, A. Steinbuchel, J. Lema
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. 2016-05-01
• Series: Chemical Engineering Transactions
• Online Access: https://www.cetjournal.it/index.php/cet/article/view/3080

The main purpose of this work was to evaluate the use of a waste stream for the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA). With the anaerobic acidogenesis process it is possible to treat and revaluate complex waste into a wide combination of volatile fatty acids (VFA) with different proportions. In this study, the behaviour of the bacterium Halomonas boliviensis on different VFA mixtures was tested, as well as the effect of using this substrate as carbon and energy source for PHA production at flask scale. The VFA mixture that yielded the highest PHA accumulation was used to scale-up the process. At bioreactor scale, a total amount of 13 g L-1 of PHA was obtained, which was formed by 70 % of the copolymer P(3HB-co-3HV) with a HV fraction of 8.5 mol %.