Muconic Acid Production from Algae Hydrolysate as a High-Value Co-Product of an Algae Biorefinery

Muconic acid is an attractive bio-derived product because it can be easily converted to adipic acid, a high-value and high-volume monomer used in the production of nylon and other valuable consumer plastics. As such, production of muconic acid from algae hydrolysate was explored to expand the suite of products available from algal biomass. We have established initial performance parameters and have shown that the range of substrates present in algae hydrolysate that are consumed by Pseudomonas putida includes at least glucose, mannose, glycerol, acetic acid, and lactic acid. We achieved complete utilization of these major carbon sources found in Scenedesmus acutus hydrolysate with a maximum muconic acid productivity of 0.25 g/L h. Final titer was 13.0 g/L (27 % molar process yield) at approximately 50 h. In addition, algae hydrolysate does not require any additional nutrients to achieve these performance metrics. Techno-economic analysis showed the potential to support up to 150 algal biorefineries at this yield with significant greenhouse gas reductions.