Stability and oscillatory behavior of microbial consortium in continuous conversion of crude glycerol to 1,3-propanediol

Microbial consortium is an alternative for bioconversion of crude glycerol to value-added products whereas concerns about the process stability in long-term operation existed. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of using an anaerobic microbial consortium as inoculum for continuous conversion of crude glycerol to 1,3-propanediol (1,3-PDO). Performances of continuous fermentations with the consortium inoculum were evaluated under different dilution rates and glycerol feed concentrations. The highest 1,3-PDO production of 57.86 g/L was achieved with a productivity of 5.55 g/(L·h). Analyses of kinetic data showed that the consortium maintained a consistent pattern for 1,3-PDO production under different operating conditions despite changes in community composition. The continuous fermentation by the consortium was able to operate for a longer period of time (31 volume changes) than that using pure culture (24 volume changes) with the average 1,3-PDO concentration of 53.52 g/L and productivity of 6.69 g/(L·h) under glycerol-excess condition, which could be contributed to the intraspecies diversity among Clostridium butyricum in the consortium. Under glycerol-limited conditions, however, a spontaneous oscillation of the consortium was observed after continuous operation for about 120 h, along with severe fluctuations of the microbial community. The oscillatory behavior could be reduced by increasing the dilution rates and was likely the metabolic feature of C. butyricum.