Strain evolution and novel downstream processing with integrated catalysis enable highly efficient co-production of 1,3-Propanediol and organic acid esters from crude glycerol

Advances in biosynthesis and downstream processing of diols

Diols are important platform chemicals with a wide range of applications in the fields of chemical and pharmaceutical industries, food, feed and cosmetics. In particular, 1,3-propanediol (PDO), 1,4-butanediol (1,4-BDO) and 1,3-butanediol (1,3-BDO) are appealing monomers for producing industrially important polymers and plastics. Therefore, the commercialization of bio-based diols is highly important for supporting the growth of biomanufacturing for the fiber industry. This review focuses primarily on the microbial production of PDO, 1,4-BDO and 1,3-BDO with respect to different microbial strains and biological routes. In addition, metabolic platforms which are designed to produce various diols using generic bioconversion strategies are reviewed for the first time. Finally, we also summarize and discuss recent developments in the downstream processing of PDO according to their advantages and drawbacks, which is taken as an example to present the prospects and challenges for industrial separation and purification of diols from microbial fermentation broth.

Kinetics-based development of two-stage continuous fermentation of 1,3-propanediol from crude glycerol by Clostridium butyricum

BACKGROUND

Glycerol, as a by-product, mainly derives from the conversion of many crops to biodiesel, ethanol, and fatty ester. Its bioconversion to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO) is an environmentally friendly method. Continuous fermentation has many striking merits over fed-batch and batch fermentation, such as high product concentration with easy feeding operation, long-term high productivity without frequent seed culture, and energy-intensive sterilization. However, it is usually difficult to harvest high product concentrations.

RESULTS

In this study, a three-stage continuous fermentation was firstly designed to produce 1,3-PDO from crude glycerol by Clostridium butyricum, in which the first stage fermentation was responsible for providing the excellent cells in a robust growth state, the second stage focused on promoting 1,3-PDO production, and the third stage aimed to further boost the 1,3-PDO concentration and reduce the residual glycerol concentration as much as possible. Through the three-stage continuous fermentation, 80.05 g/L 1,3-PDO as the maximum concentration was produced while maintaining residual glycerol of 5.87 g/L, achieving a yield of 0.48 g/g and a productivity of 3.67 g/(L·h). Based on the 14 sets of experimental data from the first stage, a kinetic model was developed to describe the intricate relationships among the concentrations of 1,3-PDO, substrate, biomass, and butyrate. Subsequently, this kinetic model was used to optimize and predict the highest 1,3-PDO productivity of 11.26 g/(L·h) in the first stage fermentation, while the glycerol feeding concentration and dilution rate were determined to be 92 g/L and 0.341 h-1, separately. Additionally, to achieve a target 1,3-PDO production of 80 g/L without the third stage fermentation, the predicted minimum volume ratio of the second fermenter to the first one was 11.9. The kinetics-based two-stage continuous fermentation was experimentally verified well with the predicted results.

CONCLUSION

A novel three-stage continuous fermentation and a kinetic model were reported. Then a simpler two-stage continuous fermentation was developed based on the optimization of the kinetic model. This kinetics-based development of two-stage continuous fermentation could achieve high-level production of 1,3-PDO. Meanwhile, it provides a reference for other bio-chemicals production by applying kinetics to optimize multi-stage continuous fermentation.

Screening of New Industrially Important Bacterial Strains for 1,3-Propanediol, 2,3-Butanediol and Ethanol Production through Biodiesel-Derived Glycerol Fermentations

A study on the ability of new microbial strains to assimilate biodiesel-derived glycerol at low purity (75% w/w) and produce extra-cellular platform chemical compounds of major interest was carried out. After screening several bacterial strains under different fermentation conditions (e.g., pH, O₂ availability, glycerol purity), three of the screened strains stood out for their high potential to produce valued-added products such as 2,3-butanediol (BDO), 1,3-propanediol (PDO) and ethanol (EtOH). The results indicate that under aerobic conditions, Klebsiella oxytoca ACA-DC 1581 produced BDO in high yield (Y_BDO/Gly = 0.46 g/g, corresponding to 94% of the maximum theoretical yield; Y_mt) and titer, while under anaerobic conditions, Citrobacter freundii NRRL-B 2645 and Enterobacter ludwigii FMCC-204 produced PDO (Y_PDO/Gly = 0.56 g/g, 93% of Y_mt) and EtOH (Y_EtOH/Gly = 0.44 g/g, 88% of Y_mt), respectively. In the case of C. freundii, the regulation of pH proved to be mandatory, due to lactic acid production and a subsequent drop of pH that resulted in fermentation ceasing. In the fed-batch culture of K. oxytoca, the BDO maximum titer reached almost 70 g/L, the Y_BDO/Gly and the mean productivity value (Pr_BDO) were 0.47 g/g and 0.4 g/L/h, respectively, while no optimization was imposed. The final BDO production obtained by this wild strain (K. oxytoca) is among the highest in the international literature, although the bioprocess requires optimization in terms of productivity and total cost. In addition, for the first time in the literature, a strain from the species Hafnia alvei (viz., Hafnia alvei ACA-DC 1196) was reported as a potential BDO producer. The strains as well as the methodology proposed in this study can contribute to the development of a biorefinery that complements the manufacture of biofuels with high-value biobased chemicals.

Strategies and tools for the biotechnological valorization of glycerol to 1, 3-propanediol: Challenges, recent advancements and future outlook

Global efforts towards decarbonization, environmental sustainability, and a growing impetus for exploiting renewable resources such as biomass have spurred the growth and usage of bio-based chemicals and fuels. In light of such developments, the biodiesel industry will likely flourish, as the transport sector is taking several initiatives to attain carbon-neutral mobility. However, this industry would inevitably generate glycerol as an abundant waste by-product. Despite being a renewable organic carbon source and assimilated by several prokaryotes, presently realizing glycerol-based biorefinery is a distant reality. Among several platform chemicals such as ethanol, lactic acid, succinic acid, 2, 3-butanediol etc. 1, 3-propanediol (1, 3-PDO) is the only chemical naturally produced by fermentation with glycerol as a native substrate. The recent commercialization of glycerol-based 1, 3-PDO by Metabolic Explorer, France, has revived research interests in developing alternate cost-competitive, scalable and marketable bioprocesses. The current review outlines natural glycerol assimilating and 1, 3-PDO-producing microbes, their metabolic pathways, and associated genes. Later, technical barriers are carefully examined, such as the direct use of industrial glycerol as input material and genetic and metabolic issues related to microbes alleviating their industrial use. Biotechnological interventions exploited in the past five years, which can substantially circumvent these challenges, such as microbial bioprospecting, mutagenesis, metabolic, evolutionary and bioprocess engineering, including their combinations, are discussed in detail. The concluding section sheds light on some of the emerging and most promising breakthroughs which have resulted in evolving new, efficient, and robust microbial cell factories and/or bioprocesses for glycerol-based 1, 3-PDO production.

Electrochemically mediated bioconversion and integrated purification greatly enhanced co-production of 1,3-propanediol and organic acids from glycerol in an industrial bioprocess

In this study, we show how electrochemically mediated bioconversion can greatly increase the co-production of 1,3-propanediol and organic acids from glycerol in an industrial bioprocess using a Clostridum pasteurianum mutant. Remarkably, an enhanced butyrate formation was observed due to a weakened butanol pathway of the mutant. This allowed the strain to have a higher ATP generation for an enhanced growth, higher glycerol consumption and PDO production. The PDO titer reached as high as 120.67 g/L at a cathodic current of -400 mA, which is 33% higher than that without electricity, with a concurrent increase of butyric acid by 80%. To fully recover the increased PDO and organic acids, a novel downstream process combining thin film evaporation of PDO and esterification of organic acids with ethanol was developed. This enables the efficient co-production of PDO, ethyl acetate and ethyl butyrate with a high overall carbon use of 87%.

In situ carbon dioxide capture to co-produce 1,3-propanediol, biohydrogen and micro-nano calcium carbonate from crude glycerol by Clostridium butyricum

Background

Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emission has become a global hot topic. Although biotechnology is considered as an environmentally friendly method to produce chemicals, almost all biochemicals face carbon dioxide emission from inevitable respiration and energy metabolism of most microorganisms. To cater for the broad prospect of biochemicals, bioprocess optimization of diverse valuable products is becoming increasingly important for environmental sustainability and cleaner production. Based on Ca(OH)₂ as a CO₂ capture agent and pH regulator, a bioprocess was proposed for co-production of 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO), biohydrogen and micro-nano CaCO₃ by Clostridium butyricum DL07.

Results

In fed-batch fermentation, the maximum concentration of 1,3-PDO reached up to 88.6 g/L with an overall productivity of 5.54 g/L/h. This productivity is 31.9% higher than the highest value previously reports (4.20 g/L/h). In addition, the ratio of H₂ to CO₂ in exhaust gas showed a remarkable 152-fold increase in the 5 M Ca(OH)₂ group compared to 5 M NaOH as the CO₂ capture agent. Green hydrogen in exhaust gas ranged between 17.2% and 20.2%, with the remainder being N₂ with negligible CO₂ emissions. During CO₂ capture in situ, micro-nano calcite particles of CaCO₃ with sizes in the range of 300 nm to 20 µm were formed simultaneously. Moreover, when compared with 5M NaOH group, the concentrations of soluble salts and proteins in the fermentation broth of 5 M Ca(OH)₂ group were notably reduced by 53.6% and 44.1%, respectively. The remarkable reduction of soluble salts and proteins would contribute to the separation of 1,3-PDO.

Conclusions

Ca(OH)₂ was used as a CO₂ capture agent and pH regulator in this study to promote the production of 1,3-PDO. Meanwhile, micro-nano CaCO₃ and green H₂ were co-produced. In addition, the soluble salts and proteins in the fermentation broth were significantly reduced.

Graphical Abstract

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13068-022-02190-2.