Abstract
Glycerol is increasingly being used as a versatile raw material within the biorefinery. However, it is very expensive to refine the crude glycerol to a high purity. In this study, the biotransformation of crude glycerol (79 % purity) using Gluconobacter oxydans spp. oxydans for the production of fine chemical dihydroxyacetone (DHA) was investigated. A conversion of up to 90 % with crude glycerol was demonstrated when using sorbitol as a secondary carbon source to enhance biomass production. A novel process for the recovery of DHA employing generation of foam, filtration and reverse osmosis, was developed. Using this strategy the protein content was reduced by up to 80 % and DHA recovery higher than 94 %.
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The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to the Research Centre Applied Biocatalysis and the VTU Engineering (Grambach, Austria) for their financial support.
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Liebminger, S., Hofbauer, R., Siebenhofer, M. et al. Microbial Conversion of Crude Glycerol to Dihydroxyacetone. Waste Biomass Valor 5, 781–787 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-013-9288-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-013-9288-x