A feeding strategy for incorporation of canola derived medium-chain-length monomers into the PHA produced by wild-type Cupriavidus necator.

The aim of this study was to increase the density of wild type Cupriavidus necator H16 biomass grown on fructose in order to produce sufficient copolymer of short-chain-length (scl) and medium-chain-length (mcl) polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) from canola oil for mechanical testing of the PHA. Initial batch cultivation on fructose was followed by exponential feeding of fructose at a predetermined μ to achieve 44.4 g biomass/l containing only 20 % w/w of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) with a Y(x/fructose) of 0.44 g/g. In a third stage, canola oil was added under N-limited conditions to produce 92 g/l of biomass with 48 % w/w scl-mcl PHA. Using known standards, the PHA composition was confirmed by GC-MS analysis as 99.81 % 3-hydroxybutyrate, 0.06 % 3-hydroxyvalerate, 0.09 % 3-hydroxyhexanoate and 0.04 % 3-hydroxyoctanoate. The melting temperature (179 °C), crystallinity (54 %), tensile stress (25.1 Mpa) and Young's modulus (698 Mpa) for a PHB standard decreased to 176 °C, 52 %, 19.1 and 443 Mpa respectively for C. necator PHA produced in the 3-stage process.