Utilization of crude paper industry effluent for Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production

Paper industry generates a large amount of effluent which contains unused organic carbon from the raw materials used. Utilization of the unused carbon may lead to remediation of the effluent by lowering the BOD. Polyhydroxyalkanoates are microbial polymers which accumulate in various bacteria in carbon rich conditions. The present study is focused on the utilization of untreated crude paper industry effluent (PIE) as a substrate for Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) production to utilize the unused carbon and develop a feasible production process. To achieve this, indigenous PHA-producing bacterial strains were screened for their ability to utilize different concentrations of PIE as a substrate. One of the isolates, ART_41, was able to utilize different concentrations of PIE for growth. ART_41 was characterizedas a Gram-negative strain belonging to Ancylobacter sp. by 16s rRNA sequencing. Maximum PHA production (41.7%) was achieved when using 30% PIE. FTIR and DSC-TGA analysis validated the extracted polymer as Poly-3-hydroxybutyrate (PHB). Thus, this study concludes that crude paper industry effluent could be utilized as a substrate when the correct bacterial strain is employed; allowing sustainable PHA production.