Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan
  • 2 Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, Semenyih 43500, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
  • 3 Biorefinery and Bioprocess Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Yuan Ze University, No. 135 Yuan-Tung Road, Chungli, Taoyuan 320, Taiwan
  • 4 Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Civil and Chemical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India; Department of Chemical Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
  • 5 Centre for Molecular Medicine Norway (NCMM), Nordic EMBL Partnership, University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital, Norway; Faculty of Biology, Hanoi National University of Education, Hanoi, Viet Nam
  • 6 Research Center for Circular Economy, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
  • 7 Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; Research Center for Circular Economy, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan; College of Engineering, Tunghai University, Taichung 407, Taiwan. Electronic address: changjs@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Bioresour Technol, 2019 Sep;287:121474.
PMID: 31122870 DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121474

Abstract

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), a family of biodegradable and renewable biopolymers show a huge potential as an alternative to conventional plastics. Extractive bioconversion (in situ product recovery) is a technique that integrates upstream fermentation and downstream purification. In this study, extractive bioconversion of PHAs from Cupriavidus necator H16 was performed via a thermo-separating aqueous two-phase system to reduce the cost and environmental impacts of PHAs production. Key operating parameters, such as polymer concentration, temperature, and pH, were optimized. The strategy achieved a yield and PF of 97.6% and 1.36-fold, respectively at 5% EOPO 3900 concentration, 30 °C fermentation temperature and pH 6. The PHAs production process was also successfully scaled up in a 2 L bioreactor. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on extractive fermentation of PHAs from Cupriavidus necator utilizing a thermo-separation system to achieve a better productivity and purity of the target product.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.