Valorisation of saline wastewaters: a challenge for the obtainment of bioproducts

The present thesis proposes the obtainment of high value-added products from industrial waste with high content of salt. The value-added products considered in this thesis are: (1) Biogas, well-known of being a renewable energy produced by means of anaerobic digestion. (2) Fatty acids, also obtained by anaerobic digestion, but without allowing the process to continue to the methanogenesis stage. From these compound, chemicals, biofuels, or even bioplastics can be obtained. (3) Polyhydroxyalkanoates, obtained from the aerobic treatment of the acidified effluent from the anaerobic fermenter. These biopolymers are known to have comparable properties to conventional thermoplastics and are good candidates to substitute them in some fields. The proposed system for the treatment of industrial saline effluents includes the start-up of the different reactors, the follow-up of the operation and the characterisation of the influents, effluents and value added products

Feasible microbial accumulation of triacylglycerides from crude glycerol

This is the peer-reviewed version of the following article: Fra-Vázquez, A. , Pedrouso, A. , Palmeiro-Sánchez, T. , Moralejo-Gárate, H. and Mosquera-Corral, A. (2018), Feasible microbial accumulation of triacylglycerides from crude glycerol. J. Chem. Technol. Biotechnol, 93: 2644-2651, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/jctb.5618. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived VersionsBACKGROUND: Crude glycerol, a by-product of the biodiesel production industry, was used to produce intracellular storage polymers for waste valorization. The enrichment of a mixed microbial culture (MMC) in microorganisms with the ability to accumulate intracellular polymers was performed in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) submitted to feast–famine conditions. The effect of different carbon sources in the accumulation of biopolymers was investigated. RESULTS: A MMC enriched in yeast and bacteria was obtained using crude glycerol as feedstock. Accumulation experiments performedwith crude glycerol, synthetic glycerol and synthetic methanol showed the feasibility of theMMCto producedifferent biopolymers. Triacylglyceride (TAG) accumulation up to 46wt% in yeast cellswas promoted by the presence of residual lipids in crude glycerol. However, bacteria fromclass Betaproteobacteria used glycerol mainly to accumulate 28wt% of polyglucose (PG) andmethanol as carbon source for cell growth. CONCLUSIONS: Aswaste valorization, a possible advantage which comes out of the present study is the use of open, non-sterile and non-defined systems to produce TAGs. These TAGs can potentially re-enter the biodiesel production process helping on the maximisation of the feedstock used in this processThis research was supported by the Spanish Government (AEI) through FISHPOL (CTQ2014–55021-R) and GRANDSEA (CTM2014–55397-JIN) projects. The authors belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC ED431C 2017/29 and to the CRETUS Strategic Partnership (AGRUP2015/02). All of these programmes are co-funded by the FEDER (EU)S