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Crude Glycerol: A Feedstock for Organic Acid Production by Microbial Bioconversion

Thomas P. West

As the global production of biodiesel as a fuel continues to increase, this will also result in a surplus of the co-products of this process. The co-product stream of biodiesel production usually includes glycerol, fatty acids and methylesters of fatty acids which is referred to as crude glycerol. During the production of vegetable oil-based biodiesel, the transesterification of the oil results in crude glycerol being formed at about 10% in weight. As the demand for biodiesel continues to increase, it will be necessary to learn whether the co-product crude glycerol, with a current price of $0.05/pound, can serve as a feedstock for subsequent microbial bioconversion into commercially valuable organic acids such as citric acid, oxalic acid, succinic acid, malic acid and fumaric acid. Recent articles have indicated that some of these industrially important organic acids can be synthesized from crude glycerol using microbial bioconversion.