Due to global warming, water shortages and excessive waste production, there is an emerging need for novel technologies to treat waste streams and valorise these to new biobased products.
In this talk, Jules Rombouts and Jure Zlopaša from the TU Delft Environmental Biotechnology group, will elaborate on the conversion of carbohydrate-rich waste streams to volatile fatty acids (VFAs) or lactic acid. VFAs and/or lactic acid can be further converted to polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) or can be fed to aerobic granular sludge to produce alginate-like extracellular (ALE) biopolymers.
Alongside the bacterial production of PHA and ALE, the possibility of cellulose recovery from wastewaters and its conversion to nanocrystalline cellulose (CNC) will be explored.
Examples will be shown of utilizing the recovered biopolymers for the environmentally friendly and facile preparation of biopolymer (nano)composites and their applications.
Jules Rombouts and Jure Zlopaša, TU Delft Environmental Biotechnology
