Biotransformation of grease waste into fatty acid by Penicillium chrysogenum SNP5 through media engineering and artificial neural network.

Abstract

Degradation of grease waste remains a challenging task. Current work deals with the biotransformation of grease waste into fatty acids under submerged fermentation using Penicillium chrysogenum SNP5 through media formulation and artificial neural network (ANN). Fermentation media was formulated to ameliorate the uptake of hydrocarbon by enhancing alkane hydroxylase (AlkB) activity, extracellular release of fatty acids and inhibiting beta-oxidation of fatty acid by regulating transketolase. Further, the process parameters of fermentation were optimized through Artificial Neural Network (ANN) using three critical variables viz; inoculum size (spores/ml), pH, and incubation time (days) while media engineering was done with the optimal supplementation of various medium components such as glucose, YPD, MnSO4, tetrahydrobiopterin (THB) and phloretin. The maximum conversion of 66.5% of grease waste into fatty acid was achieved at optimum conditions: inoculums size 3.36 × 107 spores/ml, incubation time 11.5days, pH 7.2 along with formulated media composed of 1% grease in czapek-dox medium supplemented with 55.5mM glucose, 0.5% YPD, 16.6mM hexadecane, 1mM MnSO4, 1mM THB, and 1mM phloretin. The presence of long-chain fatty acids in purified extracts such as oleic acid and octadecanoic acid as end products has valued the evolved process as another source of alternative fuel.