Bacterial cellulose production from oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) hydrolysate using Komagataeibacter xylinus strain

Bacterial cellulose produced by acetic acid bacteria has shown wide potential applications in various fields including the food industry, paper manufacturing, cosmetics, and biomedicine. This study was conducted to identify the potential of oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) as an alternative carbon source for the production of bacterial cellulose (BC) by Komagateibacter xylinus. OPEFB was first pre-treated with alkaline (sodium hydroxide, NaOH) followed by 24-h enzymatic hydrolysis at 50 degrees C (200 rpm) at several concentrations of enzymes. The results show that the best condition to produce OPEFB hydrolysate with the highest sugar concentration of 28.83 mg/mL was the pretreatment of OPEFB with 5% NaOH, followed by enzymatic hydrolysis with 5% (v/v) Accellerase (R) 1500 and 6% (w/v) loading of the pretreated substrate. The recovered OPEFB hydrolysate was then used as a substrate for BC production in an 8-day fermentation process. The wet yield of BC (166 g/L) obtained by using OPEFB hydrolyzate was lower than when using HS medium of Hestrin and Schramm (190 g/L) and commercial MRS medium (485 g/L). Further analyses included the study of surface morphology, water holding capacity, degree of crystallinity, and functional group analysis were conducted to observe the differences between BC derived from different fermentation media. This study has demonstrated the potential use of low-value biomass resources such as OPEFB as an alternative carbon source for BC production via fermentation.