Sustainable Production: Recycling of Bacterial Biomass Resulting from a Fermentation Process with Klebsiella planticola

M. Blaesen, E. Flaschel and K. Friehs

Abstract
The Gram-negative bacterium Klebsiella planticola represents an interesting host organism for the production of biotechnological products. Microbial processes – especially those of aerobic cultivation – lead to the generation of considerable amounts of biomass, thus lowering the product yield. These are the reasons for studying methods for the recycling of biomass from K. planticola. It will be shown that it is possible to disintegrate the microbial biomass – preferably by means of high pressure homogenization followed by a protease treatment of the resulting slurry of debris – in an efficient way and to recycle at least the soluble part as cultivation medium component. A recycling yield of about 77 % can be achieved. By studying the growth of K. planticola in a cyclic batch cultivation strategy with maximal recycling of the biomass no adverse effects have been observed for a series of more than 9 consecutive cultivation cycles.

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Keywords
Biomass recycling, microbial biomass, lysis, Klebsiella planticola, sustainable production, cyclic batch operation