Production of bacterial cellulose from industrial wastes: a review

Abstract

Economic, social and environmental factors have led many industries to find new and attractive ways of waste management. Clean biotechnology is an integrated platform for the conversion of wastes into valuable and less toxic end products. Bacterial cellulose (BC) has a long history of its use as an important biomaterial for various applications. However, the potential for its industrialization and commercialization at large scale is still a challenge due to high fermentation cost, low productivity and expensive culture media. To overcome this problem, low-cost substrates and large waste biomass byproducts of various industries have been evaluated for BC production. Of these, tons of wastes produced from the agro, food, brewery and sugar industries, lignocellulosic biorefineries, textile and pulp mills are ideal raw materials for BC production. Recently, various studies have reported the wastes from these industries as a source of various nutrient for the low cost production of BC. This review is centered on BC production from low cost substrates with a major focus on the wastes from agro, food, brewery, sugar industries, lignocellulosic biorefineries, textile and pulp mills. Moreover, recent research trends and commercial media available for BC production are also discussed. This review also discuss briefly the properties and applications of BC. This article would likely draw the attention of researchers towards utilization of industrial wastes as potential alternate media for the production of BC.