Boosting bacterial nanocellulose production from chemically recycled post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate

In this study, the possibility to modify the expensive Hestrin–Schramm medium for bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) production and replace significant amounts of glucose with terephthalic acid (TPA) derived after reactive extrusion processing of mixed plastic waste yielding post-consumer TPA (pcTPA), was evaluated from laboratory scale to fermentation at pilot scale. The study's findings highlight the positive impact of pcTPA on BNC yield, surpassing the performance of conventional TPA. The presence of pcTPA in the medium resulted in a BNC yield of 4.01 g/L in a scale-up step of 100 mL cultivation, while the positive control using glucose resulted in a yield of 3.57 g/L.

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