Microbial-based Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PDF)

Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is a group of natural biopolymers synthesised by a wide variety of microbial genera. It is a biodegradable and biocompatible thermoplastic consisting of a repeated chain of various hydroxyalkanoate monomers.PHA is envisioned to be one of the most prospective and futuristic materials which is beneficial to mankind and to the world. In current world trends which concerns at the sustainable development from renewable and eco-friendly resources, PHA has garnered a growing attention as an alternative to petroleum based plastics.The book comes with two main objectives. In this book, major pipelines in processing this beneficial biopolymer were first reviewed from upstream to the downstream. The upstream processing includes the isolation of PHA producers, biosynthesis of PHA, genetic modification of PHA producers and optimisation of PHA production; meanwhile the downstream processing covers the PHA recovery and purification, degradation, quantification, characterisation, as well as the application of PHA. Readers will be exposed to the introductory information, along with some necessary concepts behind each subject.The second objective of this book is to provide readers with the recent advances on each PHA processing field. Being updated with the recent findings, this will provide an insight to readers on how the research trends for each subject are evolving from time to time. These updates will become useful case studies and quick references to readers from various areas, either from academia or industry.