Descripció del projecte
The excessive use of non-biodegradable and petroleum-based polymers have been generating large amounts of pollutants in the world; this demands an urgent development for environmentally friendly materials. As a consequence, in recent years, an interest in the study of Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) has increased. These are naturally occurring biodegradable polymers that are accumulated intracellularly by Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria as a carbon storage compound. PHAs are polyesters of high molecular weight, biodegradable, biocompatible and thermoplastic. These properties are attractive to the industry since it can cover a wide variety of industrial applications, such solid-state denitrification systems, biofuel/biofuel additives, chemical precursors, oil absorbent films, dye absorbent films, food packaging materials. Due to the excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability character of PHA, its biomedical applications include tissue engineering scaffolds and control drug delivery.
Venvirotech Biotechnology SL works to obtain PHA bioplastics from organic waste. The process to obtain PHA involves different stages, the acidogenic fermentation of different industrial waste, the enrichment of a mixed microbial culture with PHA-accumulating organisms, and the accumulation step to improve the PHA content to the enriched-biomass. Finally, the synthesized PHA is extracted and characterized. Implementing a circular economy model has enabled the development of new biotechnological processes that maximize the valorization of waste, using them as raw materials to obtain value-added products.
Project overview
The doctoral project aims to design different applications of PHA synthesized from mixed microbial cultures from organic residues. The thesis will be developed in collaboration with the research group PSEP (Synthetic Polymers: Structure and Properties. Biodegradable Polymers) of Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The group carries out the know-how and it’s activity in the design and study of new polymers properties, polymers, nanocomposites and hybrid materials. They also have a long-standing experience studying biodegradable and biocompatible polymers that have applications both in the biomedical and industrial fields.
