Abstract

There is currently a growing demand for biobased plastics to replace the fossil based plastics. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) accumulated by several microorganisms as intracellular carbon and energy reserves, have similar properties like polypropylene, but have advantages of being biodegradable and biocompatible. The costs for PHA production are however 4-6 times higher than fossil-based plastics; raw material and recovery of the pure bioplastic represent ca 50% of the total production costs. The economical production of PHAs can lead to their widespread use in various pharmaceutical, biomedical, agricultural, and industrial applications. Extraction of PHAs from the producing microorganisms is one of the bottlenecks in obtaining the biopolymer at competitive costs. Today PHA extraction methods involve various organic solvents, detergents, acid, alkali, or hypochlorite, as part of the process. The use of these types of chemicals in the production of bioplastics is both costly and not desirable due to their high environmental impact. We have developed a novel 100% bio-based technology for PHA extraction as well as depolymerization of the recovered biopolymer. The new technology avoids the use of chemicals and solvents and is highly environmentally benign. It has been used for extraction of PHA from different PHA producing bacterial strains. PHA granules are extracted quantitatively in native form and are easily separated from cellular components. This technology allows the coproduction of other valuable components from non-PHA cellular materials. The presentation will describe the integrated process developed for production of PHA followed by the production of monomers by polymer depolymerization. BioExtraX AB is working on up-scaling of the new technology and is interested in making multidisciplinary collaborations with international universities and industrial counterparts.