Production of PHA under improved culture conditions and using a new feeding model

Abstract

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) have become important due to their mechanical properties, which resemble those of plastics derived from petrochemicals. Despite the advantages they possess, its use is limited by production costs. In terms of the culture systems used for process improvement, fed batch systems are the most studied, since they allow higher productivity to be obtained. In this study, PHAs production was reviewed with a new feeding model against the reported exponential model and under improved culture conditions. In the results, the predictive feeding strategy allowed to improve the production of PHAs (24.1 ± 1.14 g/L) by controlling the concentration of residual substrate, with respect to the exponential model (18.1 ± 1.33 g/L), achieving a biomass concentration of 40.9 ± 1.12 g/L and a polymer productivity of 1.01 gPHA/L.h, improving the process by 25%.