Online Seminar

Next Seminar #55 - April 11th, 2024 4PM CET

Estel Rueda Hernandez (Technical University of Catalonia, Spain)

Can cyanobacteria meet the bioplastics production challenge? - An environmental and economic perspective.

The urgency to replace conventional plastics with sustainable alternatives is evident. Bio-based polymers, especially PHAs (polyhydroxyalkanoates), offer a promising solution to reduce fossil resource dependency and manage plastic waste challenges. In this context, cyanobacteria offer a promising solution as they can produce, PHAs autotrophically using inorganic carbon sources (CO2 or HCO3-) and sunlight. Cyanobacteria utilize photosynthesis to produce polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), particularly polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), and other co-polymers if supplemented with organic carbon sources. PHAs production in cyanobacterial cells is induced by nutrient starvation after initial growth in a nutrient-rich medium. During the accumulation phase, different strategies (e.g. salinity increase, darkness, addition of organic carbon, etc.) to enhance PHAs accumulation can be applied. In this context, the use of wastewater, instead of standard growth media, to cultivate cyanobacteria and produce PHB, has been seen as a good strategy to reduce production costs. Despite the apparent advantages of this process, there is yet no industrial plant producing PHAs using cyanobacteria.  

In this seminar, we will analyze a hypothetical cyanobacteria PHB production industrial plant, in terms of the environmental impact and the costs of the process. Different scenarios will be analyzed, including different nutrient sources (e.g. wastewater and standard growth medium BG-11) and different contents of PHB contents in the biomass. 

The main aim of this study is to detect the weakest parts of the process in terms of sustainability and to evaluate the minimum PHB productivity that should be achieved to make PHB production with cyanobacteria economically viable. Finally, taking these results in mind, new strategies necessary to fully unlock the industrial-scale production of this looking-forward approach will be discussed. 

The presentation will cover part of what may be found here:

Rueda, E., Senatore, V., Zarra, T., Naddeo, V., García, J., & Garfí, M. 2023. Life cycle assessment and economic analysis of bioplastics production from cyanobacteria. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2023.e00579 

Upcoming talks in 2024

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Pilot (2020)

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Keynote Speaker at Cyano2020 Summer School