Development of a Cost-Effective Culture Medium for the Bacterial Cellulose Production Using Food Industry Wastes

Use of bacterial cellulose has been interested in various industries, especially medical and pharmaceutical industries, due to its unique characteristics, compared to plant cellulose. However, bacterial cellulose production costs have limited its industrial uses, compared to plant cellulose. Decreasing costs of the culture media is one of the effective parameters for the industrial production of bacterial cellulose. This is the first report on combination of vinasse and glucose syrup as a bacterial cellulose culture medium.

Two inexpensive culture media were developed for high-level production of bacterial cellulose based on food industrial wastes of corn steep liquor-glucose and vinasse-glucose syrups. Concentrations of glucose syrup and corn steep liquor as a culture medium and concentrations of vinasse and glucose syrup as another culture medium were optimized using response surface method with central composite design to maximize bacterial cellulose production yields.

Under the optimal conditions after seven days, 14.8 and 13.3 g.l-1 dry bacterial cellulose were achieved in corn steep liquor-glucose syrup and vinasse-glucose syrup respectively. Yield of produced bacterial cellulose from these two cost-effective culture media was one of the highest values reported for bacterial cellulose. Furthermore, the produced bacterial cellulose was characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy.