Polyhydroxyalkanoates from industrial cheese whey: Production and characterization of polymers with differing hydroxyvalerate content

“…Therefore, it is necessary to find cheap and efficient alternative substrates to increase the economic feasibility and sustainability of PHA production. Recently, researchers have started to explore the use of different low-cost substrates such as whey [16,17], glycerol [18,19], molasses [20,21], oils [22,23] and wastewater [24] for the biosynthesis of PHAs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valorisation of Sugarcane Bagasse for the Sustainable Production of Polyhydroxyalkanoates

Hassan,

Ngo,

Ball

2024

Sustainability

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With the world shifting towards renewable and sustainable resources, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) have attracted significant interest as an alternative to synthetic plastics. While possessing promising properties suitable for various applications, the production of PHAs has not yet reached a global commercial scale. The main reason is the high cost of production, which represents a major limitation. Sugarcane bagasse (SCB) is an abundant lignocellulosic waste around the world. Its use to produce PHA enhances the feasibility of producing PHAs at commercial scale. However, SCB requires pretreatment and hydrolysis steps to release the sugars prior to the microbial fermentation. The cost associated with these steps poses additional challenges for large-scale production. Another challenge is the release of inhibitors during the pretreatment process which can result in a low PHA yield. The development of a low cost, co-culture strategy for the bioconversion of SCB into PHAs, can represent a pivotal step towards the large-scale production of bioplastics. This review highlights the advancements made in recent years on the microbial production of PHA using SCB as potential feedstock, with a proposed biological strategy and circular economy model.

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“…On the other hand, when microorganisms are fed with a mixture of C2-C5 volatile fatty acids, synthetic or coming from the controlled acidogenic fermentation of organic waste, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) copolymer (P3HBV) is obtained. Since acetic and butyric acids are used for 3-hydroxybutyrate repeating units (3HB), whereas propionic and valeric acids are used for 3-hydroxyvaleate (3HV) comonomers, it is possible to have copolymers characterized by different composition and, hence, by different chemical, thermal, and mechanical properties [14,17,18]. For instance, a decrease in the P3HBV melting point and crystallinity can be reached by increasing the 3HV content up to around 40 mol%.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid Estimation of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) Composition Using ATR-FTIR

Alfano,

Pagnanelli,

Martinelli

2023

Polymers

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A great research effort is involved in polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) production and characterization since they are an attractive degradable polyester family that potentially could substitute oil-based polymers. This is due to two main key factors: their production is sustainable, being that they are produced by microorganisms possibly fed by organic waste-derived products, and they are degradable. Moreover, PHAs’ thermal and mechanical properties could be tuned by varying their monomeric composition through the proper selection of microorganism feedstock and bioreactor operative conditions. Hence, a rapid and facile determination of the PHA chemical structure by widely available instrumentation is useful. As an alternative to the standard gas-chromatographic method, a new procedure for the composition determination of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (P3HBV), the most common PHA copolymer, by attenuated total reflection FTIR (ATR-FTIR) is presented. It is based on the linear dependence of selected and normalized absorption band intensity with the molar fraction of repeating units. To break free from the crystallinity variability, which affects the result reproducibility and data scattering, the polymer sample was rapidly quenched from the melt directly on the surface of the ATR internal reflection element and analyzed. The data obtained from 14 samples with a molar fraction of 3-hydroxybutyrate repeating units (X3HB) ranging from 0.15 to 1 were analyzed. According to preliminary analyses, the normalized intensity of two absorption bands was selected to develop a calibration method able to predict X3HB of unknown samples and to evaluate the related uncertainty through prediction intervals of inverse regression. The proposed method proves to be useful for an easy and rapid estimation of P3HBV composition.

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Polyhydroxyalkanoates from industrial cheese whey: Production and characterization of polymers with differing hydroxyvalerate content

Cited by 11 publications

References 37 publications

A novel sustainable PHA downstream method

A novel sustainable PHA downstream method

Valorisation of Sugarcane Bagasse for the Sustainable Production of Polyhydroxyalkanoates

Rapid Estimation of Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) Composition Using ATR-FTIR

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