Recent Advances and Challenges towards Sustainable Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) Production (original) (raw)

Process Design and Evaluation of Biobased Polyhydroxyalkanoates (pha) Production

Chemical engineering transactions, 2011

Conventional plastic products are made of crude oil components through polymerization. Aim of the project ANIMPOL is to convert lipids into polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) which constitute a group of biobased and biodegradable polyesters. Replacing fossil based plastics with biobased alternatives can help reducing dependence on crude oil and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. As substrate material waste streams from slaughtering cattle, pig or poultry are taken into account. Lipids from rendering site are used for biodiesel production. Slaughtering waste streams may also be hydrolyzed to achieve higher lipid yield. Biodiesel can be separated into a high and low quality fraction. High quality meets requirements for market sale as fuel and low quality can be used for PHA production. This provides the carbon source for PHA production. Nitrogen source for bacteria reproduction is available from hydrolyzed waste streams or can be added separately. Selected microbial strains are used to produ...

Advanced approaches to produce polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) biopolyesters in a sustainable and economic fashion

The EuroBiotech Journal, 2018

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), the only group of “bioplastics” sensu stricto, are accumulated by various prokaryotes as intracellular “carbonosomes”. When exposed to exogenous stress or starvation, presence of these microbial polyoxoesters of hydroxyalkanoates assists microbes to survive. “Bioplastics” such as PHA must be competitive with petrochemically manufactured plastics both in terms of material quality and manufacturing economics. Cost-effectiveness calculations clearly show that PHA production costs, in addition to bioreactor equipment and downstream technology, are mainly due to raw material costs. The reason for this is PHA production on an industrial scale currently relying on expensive, nutritionally relevant “1st-generation feedstocks”, such as like glucose, starch or edible oils. As a way out, carbon-rich industrial waste streams (“2nd-generation feedstocks”) can be used that are not in competition with the supply of food; this strategy not only reduces PHA production co...

Biotechnological Production of Polyhydroxyalkanoates: A Review on Trends and Latest Developments

Chinese Journal of Biology, 2014

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) producers have been reported to reside at various ecological niches which are naturally or accidently exposed to high organic matter or growth limited conditions such as dairy wastes, hydrocarbon contaminated sites, pulp and paper mill wastes, agricultural wastes, activated sludges of treatment plants, rhizosphere, and industrial effluents. Few among them also produce extracellular by-products like rhamnolipids, extracellular polymeric substances, and biohydrogen gas. These sorts of microbes are industrially important candidates for the reason that they can use waste materials of different origin as substrate with simultaneous production of valuable bioproducts including PHA. Implementation of integrated system to separate their by-products (intracellular and extracellular) can be economical in regard to production. In this review, we have discussed various microorganisms dwelling at different environmental conditions which stimulate them to accumulate ca...

Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) Biopolyesters - Emerging and Major Products of Industrial Biotechnology

The EuroBiotech Journal

Background: Industrial Biotechnology (“White Biotechnology”) is the large-scale production of materials and chemicals using renewable raw materials along with biocatalysts like enzymes derived from microorganisms or by using microorganisms themselves (“whole cell biocatalysis”). While the production of ethanol has existed for several millennia and can be considered a product of Industrial Biotechnology, the application of complex and engineered biocatalysts to produce industrial scale products with acceptable economics is only a few decades old. Bioethanol as fuel, lactic acid as food and PolyHydroxyAlkanoates (PHA) as a processible material are some examples of products derived from Industrial Biotechnology. Purpose and Scope: Industrial Biotechnology is the sector of biotechnology that holds the most promise in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and mitigating environmental degradation caused by pollution, since all products that are made today from fossil carbon feedstocks c...