TRL 5 aerobic photobioreactor reliant on engineered Synechocystis strains to produce enantiopure L-lactic acid, which is the precursor of polylactate bioplastics, providing the best potential economic margin according to PHO, from CO2 and driven by solar radiation during daylight hours and/or LED radiation (e.g. during night-time hours). Operating the photobioreactor exploiting both solar and artificial light is enabled by the envisaged highly integrated processes’ scheme, which will power LEDs from low-price electricity derived from a biogas engine based cogeneration unit.
The main factors we want to capture in the concept design of the MF1 (arbitrarily ordered) are:
- increase lactic acid tolerance;
- elimination of competing substrate-consuming pathways;
- increase of substrate availability for the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) enzyme;
- optimize expression of LDH using systems that respond to cues that are industrially relevant;
- modulate activity of LDH using recently identified allosteric effectors;
- increase photosynthetic efficiency of production strains by the broadening of their absorption spectrum;
- optimize the minerals requirement during production
- optimize/ select the optimal conditions for the purification of lactic acid.
