Search for Biofuel Production by an Oleaginous Microbes using Model Waste resources

Abstract

The world is confronted with twin crises of fossil fuel depletion and environmental imbalance due to excess and uncontrolled use of fossil fuels. These finite reserves are concentrated in certain regions of the world. Countries exporting fuel to other countries those lacking the fuel are now facing problems like foreign exchange and affecting economical growth. Hence there is a need to search an alternative fuels sources. Bacterial lipids have relevant applications in the production of renewable fuels and bio based oleochemicals. Taking in to consideration the problems associated with the cost, renewability and matching of fuel properties; present study is focused on isolation of oleaginous bacteria as a optimum lipid producers and use of lipids for conversion in to biodiesel. The oleaginous bacterium was isolated from lipid rich waste sites and screened using stains Sudan Black-B and Methylene Blue. One of the screened bacterium was identified as potent lipid producer and subjected to morphological, biochemical and 16 S rRNA sequencing for characterization at molecular level. The nucleotide sequence was deposited to NCBI for an accession number and characterization. It was identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (MF510169). The bacterium was screened for utilization of ideal waste substrate so as to obtain optimum lipid production. Out of fourteen substrates tested under study corn stover waste peels showed better performance towards lipid productivity. Substrate was hydrolysed using 0.25% strong sulphuric acid and employed as a carbon source for lipid production with Mineral Salt Medium (MSM). The resulting fermentation medium was optimised for lipid production by varying different parameters like temperature, pH, agitation speed (RPM), inoculums age and density, carbon source percentage, nitrogen source and its percentage, C:N ratio and fermentation time. The bacterium was able to produce 2.2 ml lipids /100 ml of production medium with oil content 3.8% as wild lipid producer. The strain was improved further b