Downstream process development in biotechnological itaconic acid manufacturing

Abstract

Itaconic acid is a promising chemical that has a wide range of applications and can be obtained in large scale using fermentation processes. One of the most important uses of this biomonomer is the environmentally sustainable production of biopolymers. Separation of itaconic acid from the fermented broth has a considerable impact in the total production cost. Therefore, optimization and high efficiency downstream processes are technological challenges to make biorefineries sustainable and economically viable. This review describes the current state of the art in recovery and purification for itaconic acid production via bioprocesses. Previous studies on the separation of itaconic acid relying on operations such as crystallization, precipitation, extraction, electrodialysis, diafiltration, pertraction, and adsorption. Although crystallization is a typical method of itaconic acid separation from fermented broth, other methods such as membrane separation and reactive extraction are promising as a recovery steps coupled to the fermentation, potentially enhancing the overall process yield. Another approach is adsorption in fixed bed columns, which efficiently separates itaconic acid. Despite recent advances in separation and recovery methods, there is still space for improvement in IA recovery and purification.

Ecology of cold environments: new insights of bacterial metabolic adaptation through an integrated genomic-phenomic approach

“…Thus, it’s not surprising that this organism was the first Antarctic marine bacterium whose genome was fully sequenced and annotated 20 . This, combined with its remarkable versatility and its biotechnological potential 22–25 makes PhTAC125 an interesting and potentially useful model for investigating strategies adopted by psychrophilic bacteria to survive at low temperatures. Furthermore, its proteome 26, 27 , the structural features of its membrane 28, 29 , detailed growth phenotypes 30, 31 and a genome-scale metabolic reconstruction 32 determined under different temperatures are also available.…”

New approaches for itaconic acid production: bottlenecks and possible remedies

“…IA has two pKa values; hence, it can exist in three different forms depending on the pH. Therefore, it is required to control the pH around the second pKa of IA, where it is fully ionized [99]. Fidaleo and Moresi [100] carried out electrodialysis with univalent electrolytes, by converting IA into a disodium salt and obtained recovery of about 98%.…”

“…However, drawbacks of this system include high membrane cost, membrane fouling and inability to remove charged nutrients and inorganic ions, which limit its further applications [101]. Magalhães et al [99] have described various other recovery methods for IA, and also compared their advantages and disadvantages.…”

Integrated process development of a reactive extraction concept for itaconic acid and application to a real fermentation broth

“…Its market volume rose from 15.000 t/a to 80.000 t/a between 2001 and 2004 . The estimated world market for IA in 2014 was valued at U.S.$ 126.4 million with further potential to increase . It is described by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of the 12 most promising valuable bio‐based platform chemicals or building blocks derived from biocatalytic origin , although in a later revision IA was removed from the list with the argument that too little research was presented .…”

“…U. maydis is well suited for the production of IA due to its unicellular growth pattern and insensitivity toward medium impurities or organic solvents compared to the filamentous A. terreus . The state‐of‐the‐art downstream process for IA is a multistep combination of filtration, centrifugation, and crystallization (with crystallization being the recovery and polishing step) often leading to problems with respect to purity or yield caused by the high polarity of the acid . A downstream process using crystallization as recovery and polishing operation is unfavorable because of its high demand in energy and costly equipment .…”