Polyhydroxyalkanoates production by an advanced food-on-demand strategy: The effect of operational conditions

Despite the increasing number of studies related to the polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production from sewage sludge of wastewater treatment plants, there is still a gap in the correlation between the operational conditions, such as the organic loading rate (OLR), and the intracellular polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) content, productivity and final recovery of the polymer. Therefore, this work aims to provide experimental data on PHA productivity and purity in view of scaling up the process to an industrial level taking into account process parameters. In view of that, three OLR were applied during the selection of PHA-accumulating bacteria in sewage sludge. Then, the biomass was harvested and subjected to batch accumulation experiments at two organic loads per dosage by employing a tailor-made software to adopt an automated feed-on-demand strategy, which allowed for 30–56 h of accumulation tests in stand-alone mode. Finally, an improved protocol for PHA extraction has been applied. Experimental results show that the maximum PHA content (60% w/w) was achieved using the highest organic load per dosage during the accumulation test with the biomass selected at the highest OLR (1.8 g COD L−1 d−1). Also, the extraction protocol efficiency was proven with four samples with different PHA content, achieving recovery yield as high as 78 ± 3 % with a purity of 89 ± 2 %, thus demonstrating that the adopted strategy might be beneficial for industrial use.