Journal
POLYMERS
Volume 14, Issue 11, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/polym14112155
Keywords
PHA extraction; chemical digestion; design of experiments; polymer properties
Categories
Funding
- INGREEN project - Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (JU) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [838120]
- European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
- Bio-based Industries Consortium
- FCT-Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, I.P. [UIDP/04378/2020, UIDB/04378/2020, LA/P/0140/2020]
- FCT [2020.08574.BD]
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [2020.08574.BD] Funding Source: FCT
- H2020 Societal Challenges Programme [838120] Funding Source: H2020 Societal Challenges Programme
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Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are potential substitutes for conventional oil-based plastics, but high production costs are a limiting factor. This study investigated the extraction of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) using sodium hydroxide or sodium hypochlorite as digestion agents. The optimized conditions resulted in high purity and recovery rates for PHA.
Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are biopolymers with potential to replace conventional oil-based plastics. However, PHA high production costs limit their scope of commercial applications. Downstream processing is currently the major cost factor for PHA production but one of the least investigated aspects of the PHA production chain. In this study, the extraction of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) produced at pilot scale by a mixed microbial culture was performed using sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) as digestion agents of non-PHA cellular mass. Optimal conditions for digestion with NaOH (0.3 M, 4.8 h) and NaClO (9.0%, 3.4 h) resulted in polymers with a PHA purity and recovery of ca. 100%, in the case of the former and ca. 99% and 90%, respectively, in the case of the latter. These methods presented higher PHA recoveries than extraction by soxhlet with chloroform, the benchmark protocol for PHA extraction. The polymers extracted by the three methods presented similar PHA purities, molecular weights and polydispersity indices. Using the optimized conditions for NaOH and NaClO digestions, this study analyzed the effect of the initial intracellular PHA content (40-70%), biomass concentration (20-100 g/L) and biomass pre-treatment (fresh vs. dried vs. lyophilized) on the performance of PHA extraction by these two methods.
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