Sunday, May 3, 2009
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Glyceric acid production from raw glycerol by acetic acid bacteria

H. Habe1, Y. Shimada2, T. Fukuoka1, D. Kitamoto1, M. Itagaki2, K. Watanabe2, H. Yanagishita1, and K. Sakaki1. (1) Research Institute for Innovation in Sustainable Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), AIST Central 5-2, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, (2) Department of Chemical Industry, Science University of Tokyo, Noda, Chiba, Japan

For the development of a sustainable industrial society, it will be necessary to shift from our dependence on petroleum to the use of renewable resources, and much attention has been paid to biorefineries, which enable the production of biofuels as well as building-block chemicals from biomass. Glycerol is a by-product from biodiesel production, which has increased dramatically during the last 10 years, resulting a large in excess of glycerol, especially in Europe. Therefore, glycerol is an attractive feedstock for producing useful chemicals.

One promising glycerol derivative, glyceric acid (GA), is obtained by metal-catalytic oxidation of glycerol. GA has the potential to be a building block for several chemical compounds used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry. However, little is known about the production of GA from glycerol via bioprocesses. Hence, we investigated the GA productivity of acetic acid bactera.

Gluconobacter sp. NBRC3259 produced 55 g/l GA as well as 34 g/l dihydroxyacetone (DHA) from 167 g/l glycerol during 4 days of incubation in a jar fermentor with pH control. The GA production from raw glycerol was also evaluated after proper pretreatment of raw glycerol samples. Using raw glycerol sample, 40 g/l GA and 23 g/l DHA were produced from 175 g/l glycerol. This study was supported by Industrial Technology Research Grant Program in 2008 from New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan.


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See more of The 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (May 3-6, 2009)