Loughborough University
Browse
Ting_V_Co_production_of_bio_oil_propylene_through_the_hydrothermal.pdf (341.76 kB)

Co-production of bio-oil and propylene through the hydrothermal liquefaction of polyhydroxybutyrate producing cyanobacteria

Download (341.76 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2019-07-22, 12:19 authored by Jonathan L. Wagner, Rachel Bransgrove, Tracey A. Beacham, Michael J. Allen, Katharina Meixner, Bernhard Drosg, Valeska P. Ting, Christopher J. Chuck
In this investigation, PHB producing cyanobacteria were converted through hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) into propylene and a bio-oil suitable for advanced biofuel production. HTL of model compounds demonstrated that in contrast to proteins and carbohydrates, which react to produce a range of alternative intermediates, no synergistic effects were detected when converting PHB in the presence of algal biomass. Subsequently, Synechocystis cf. salina, which had accumulated 7.5 wt% PHB was converted via HTL (15 % dry weight loading at 340 °C). The reaction gave an overall propylene yield of 2.6 %, higher than that obtained from the analogous model compounds, in addition to a bio-oil with a low total nitrogen content of 4.6 %. No propylene was recovered from the alternative non-PHB producing cyanobacterial strains, Anabaena, Spirulina or Synechococcus, suggesting that PHB is the sole source of propylene. PHB producing microorganisms could therefore be used as a feedstock for a biorefinery to produce polypropylene and advanced biofuels, with the level of propylene being directly proportional to the accumulated amount of PHB.

History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department

  • Chemical Engineering

Published in

Bioresource Technology

Volume

207

Pages

166 - 174

Citation

WAGNER, J.L. ... et al., 2016. Co-production of bio-oil and propylene through the hydrothermal liquefaction of polyhydroxybutyrate producing cyanobacteria. Bioresource Technology, 207, pp. 166 - 174.

Publisher

© Elsevier BV

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2016-02-06

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Bioresource Technology and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2016.01.114

ISSN

0960-8524

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC