Boosting bacterial nanocellulose production from chemically recycled post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate

The circular economy is emerging with new sustainable solutions to the ever-growing plastic waste challenge, garnering increasing attention. In this study, the possibility to modify expensive Hestrin–Schramm medium (HS) for bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) production and replace significant amounts of glucose with terephthalic acid (TPA) derived after reactive extrusion processing of mixed plastic waste yielding post consumer TPA (pcTPA), was evaluated from laboratory scale to fermentation at pilot scale. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) were used to assess the structural, thermal, and morphological properties of BNC and its generated derivatives. The study's findings highlight the positive impact of pcTPA on BNC yield, surpassing the performance of conventional TPA. The presence of pcTPA in the medium resulted in a BNC yield of 4.01 g/L in a scale-up step of 100 mL cultivation, while the positive control using glucose resulted in a yield of 3.57 g/L. The efficiency of glucose substitution with pcTPA increased with each scale-up step, ultimately reaching a 320% yield increase in comparison to the positive control. Additionaly, the procedure that enhanced the materials' thermoplasticity in the form of derivatives has been established resulting in the production of BNC laurate and BNC octanoate derivatives with melting temperatures of 270 °C and 280 °C, respectively. Overall, this study investigates the potential of this approach as an important circular economic solution, enabling an increased sustainable perspective for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) circularity and significantly a much needed cost reduction for BNC production with enhanced thermoplasticity.