Biorefinery meets biofermentation to produce food additives

Abstract

The overall goal of the project was to transfer the concept of biorefinery to a biofermentation process to produce e.g. nutrients, enzymes or biopolymers. The feasibility of the strategy was proven in a fermentation process with industrial wastewater containing phenol as a toxic pollutant. The degrading experiments were done with native bacteria and fungi which have been selected according to literature in consideration of degrading attitude, degrading rates and metabolic properties. The second step was to answer the question of to what extent value creation through fermentation of the selected organisms is possible. Questions on how to carry out the procedure, the localisation of the product (intracellular or extra cellular) and its traceability were also pursued. Possible products have been analysed. As a result thereof an enzyme assay has been carried out to verify the units of an extra cellular α-amylase. The third step was to improve the fermentation process through optimisation of parameters like O 2 -transfer and feeding strategies for the minimal substrate. It could be shown that produced biomass could be doubled. Further experiments are necessary to provide for optimised economical process and product utilisation.