Bioenergy from bio-oil fermentation using microbial communities to produce added value chemicals
Résumé
Although many efforts have been dedicated to the development of sustainable biorefineries, there are still some gaps to cover, especially to make chemicals production energetically efficient and rentable. The proposed route combines biotechnological and thermochemical processes, departing from low-cost raw materials to produce valuable chemicals via the activity of environmental microbial communities. This work study the use of bio-oil (obtained from pyrolysis of lignocellulosic waste biomass from agricultural local activities) as carbon source for microbial communities from hydrocarbon contaminated environments. The aim is that these microbial communities (resistant to hydrocarbons) use the bio-oil as carbon source to produce polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), which are biocompatible polymers with similar properties to polyethylene and polypropylene. Sediments were sampled from two different hydrocarbon contaminated environments and microbial communities were isolated in batch cultures under feast-famine regime. Bio-oil was produced by intermediate pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass in a batch reactor at 500°C. The bio-oil was used as carbon source for microbial cultures. Preliminary results showed that the microbial communities isolated from the sediments can grow in presence of bio-oil and use it as carbon source. The presence of PHA granules was observed by fluorescence under microscopy. PHA product was found in the cultures of microbial communities in presence of bio-oil by GC-FID analysis.