Production and recovery process of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) from waste activated sludge.

Polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) is bacterial storage polyester, currently receiving much attention because of its biodegradable potential. Production of microbial polymers is expensive due to supplementary carbon source and downstream processing cost. The present study aimed at reducing the fermentation carbon source cost by using waste activated sludge and wastewater, and evaluating the use of proper solvent for the recovery of PHB from activated sludge to minimize the downstream cost. To improve the recovery process efficiency, different strategies for the extraction and recovery of the polymer from the waste activated sludge were applied. The maximum solubility of PHB (80%) was observed in chloroform, and precipitation with methanol (95%) was observed. Impurities interference in the PHB recovery process was also studied. By using these optimized recovery processes with optimized C:N ratio 10, the maximum product recovery was observed to be 62.3% (w/w). The results are presented and discussed in this paper.