Phosphorus recovery from mixed microbial culture: production and extraction through green methods

Large scale polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) production is limited by high production costs compared to that of petroleum-based plastics. Two key factors can be pin down to reduce costs: i) the use of mixed microbial cultures (MMC) instead of pure cultures and ii) the application of cheap and environmental friendly recovery technologies. In this work, the MMC biomass with PHA-accumulating capacity was selected in a sequencing batch reactor fed with a synthetic effluent emulating a fermented oil mill wastewater. The biomass was harvested and transferred to an accumulation reactor, where PHA contents up to 54% of the dry cell weight were obtained, using a mixture of acetic and propionic acids. A c…