Abstrakt

Production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) by Bacillus subtilis ANM1 using bio effluents as substrates and characterization using FTIR analysis

M.Anjali, A.Kanakalakshmi, C.Sukuma, K.Shanthi

Polyhydroxyalkanoates are Biopolymers produced by many bacterial species present in nature. These are degradable compared to conventional plastics and are produced as intracellular reserve granules at the time of starvation like depletion of nitrogen source, salt stress and excess of carbon source. However, commercialization of such bio degradable polymers has not been seriously attempted due to several reasons and one such reason is that PHA is not flexible as expected. Moreover PHA cannot be produced easily at low cost as the carbon source used for the media preparation is very expensive. This led to the usage of agro industrial wastes as a replacement for sucrose as an energy source in the media. In this study, different agro industrial residues were used as cheaper source of carbon like sugarcanemolasses, distillery effluent,milkwhey fromdiary industry, paper industry effluent, and biodiesel industry generated crude glycerol waste. PHA was extracted using Sodiumhypochlorite extraction fromBacillus subtilisANM1 and the extracted PHAfromdifferent industrial sources was characterized using Fourier Transformation Infra Red (FTIR) spectroscopic technique and checked for the functional groups. The polymer produced from all the agro industrial sources showed characteristic bands for different functional groups of PHA like CH, CH2, C=O, and C-O. Their frequency value was found to be much higher than that of the normal. The carbonyl group showed strong band in 1636-1673 cm-1. The C-O group showed a strong absorption in 1047-1089cm-1. Thus the study suggested that bio-effluents could be used for the production of Biopolymers so that it acts as a cost effective method for polymer extraction.