{"id":117142,"date":"2020-12-15T06:22:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T14:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/salt-tolerant-bacteria-with-an-appetite-for-sludge-make-biodegradable-plastics"},"modified":"2020-12-15T06:22:16","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T14:22:16","slug":"salt-tolerant-bacteria-with-an-appetite-for-sludge-make-biodegradable-plastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/12\/salt-tolerant-bacteria-with-an-appetite-for-sludge-make-biodegradable-plastics","title":{"rendered":"Salt-tolerant bacteria with an appetite for sludge make biodegradable plastics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/salt-tolerant-bacteria-with-an-appetite-for-sludge-make-biodegradable-plastics.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The United States generates seven million tons of sewage sludge annually, enough to fill 2, 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. While a portion of this waste is repurposed for manure and other land applications, a substantial amount is still disposed of in landfills. In a new study, Texas A&amp;M University researchers have uncovered an efficient way to use leftover sludge to make biodegradable plastics.<\/p>\n<p>In the September issue of the journal <i>American Chemical Society (ACS) Omega<\/i>, the researchers report that the bacterium <i>Zobellella denitrificans<\/i> ZD1, found in mangroves, can consume sludge and wastewater to produce polyhydroxybutyrate, a type of biopolymer that can be used in lieu of petroleum-based plastics. In addition to reducing the burden on landfills and the environment, the researchers said <i>Zobellella denitrificans<\/i> ZD1 offers a way to cut down upstream costs for bioplastics manufacturing, a step toward making them more competitively priced against regular plastics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe price of raw materials to cultivate biopolymer-producing bacteria accounts for 25\u201345% of the total production cost of manufacturing bioplastics. Certainly, this cost can be greatly reduced if we can tap into an alternate resource that is cheaper and readily obtainable,\u201d said Kung-Hui (Bella) Chu, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. \u201cWe have demonstrated a potential way to use municipal wastewater-activated sludge and agri-and aqua-culture industrial wastewater to make biodegradable plastics. Furthermore, the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/bacterial+strain\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">bacterial strain<\/a> does not require elaborate sterilization processes to prevent contamination from other microbes, further cutting down operating and production costs of bioplastics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United States generates seven million tons of sewage sludge annually, enough to fill 2, 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. While a portion of this waste is repurposed for manure and other land applications, a substantial amount is still disposed of in landfills. In a new study, Texas A&amp;M University researchers have uncovered an efficient way [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":544,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/544"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}