Microbial biodegradation of cellophane

✍ Scribed by E. Lamot; J. P. Voets

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 382 KB
• Volume: 18
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0233-111X
• DOI: 10.1002/jobm.19780180305

✦ Synopsis

Preliminary experiments with pure cultures of seven cellulolytic microorganisms (Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp., Chaetomium crispatum, Ch. globosum, Sclerotium roljsii and two actinomycetes) revealed that the substrate as such was very recalcitrant, probably due to the occurrence of insoluble coating agents.

Therefore, mixed cultures of the above mentioned cellulolytic microorganisms were used as inoculum.

The cellophane showed a slow microbial degradation which starts only after 37 days of incubation. This long lag-phase i R due to the unaltered presence of the coating agents. However, when the coating agents are extracted with tetrahydrofuran, the biodegradation starts after 10 days, resulting in a biodegradation rate of 85% after 52 days of incubation and a protein content of 30%.

The endproduct (30% protein, 60% soluble sugars, 10% residual substrate) will probably be useful as compost.