| 摘要 |
Hypochlorite digestion of bacterial biomass to recover intracellular poly- beta -hydroxylalkanoic acid (PHA) has not been used on a large scale since it has been widely reported to severely degrade the polymer. The process of the invention proposes to optimize the initial biomass concentration, the digestion time and pH of the hypochlorite solution to minimize degradation. Consequently, PHA of up to 95% purity with an average molecular weight of 600,000 can be recovered from biomass initially containing PHA having a molecular weight of 1,200,000. By incorporating a pretreatment step with an anionic surfactant solution, PHA of 99% purity with a molecular weight of 1.20x106 was obtained from biomass containing 57% PHA by weight with an initial molecular weight of 1.25x106.
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