Our partner BIOTREND will attend the BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology on the 8th to 11th July, in Des Moines, in USA to engage with potentiel customers of PHA extraction technology. This Congress is a unique forum for business executives, government officials, academic researchers and end users to share the latest advances in industrial chemicals and products, food ingredients, advanced biofuels and biorefinery platforms, synthetic biology, agricultural technologies, crop production and more.
PHA extraction from mixed microbial cultures
The extraction and purification of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) from the producing biomass are important contributors to the final price of the polymer. This is more so for the extraction of PHA from biomass using waste-derived streams, both industrial and municipal, and, in case of the production by mixed cultures, the heterogeneous and varying nature of the biomass.
Although for high-purity and low volume applications the use of fossil-based organic solvents is still considered, the trend is definitively to use alternative processes. Further, for the feasible application at decentralised locations complying with the regulatory environment and permits of operation at the waste producing or treatment facilities (ex. industrial facilities processing agricultural or forestry raw-material or municipal wastewater treatment plants), the extraction process should use standard and readily available equipment, preferably equipment that can be routinely found on those sites, not requiring special training for the plant operators.
BIOTREND will present the development of an organic solvent-free process suited to processing a wide range of PHA-containing biomasses from different sources, focusing in processing biomass derived from municipal wastewater treatment plants. The progresses leading to yields exceeding 85% and purities higher than 95% will be discussed, together with scale-up.
