RT journal article
T1 Production of hydrogen from crude glycerol via an integrated process of L-malate biosynthesis by Escherichia coli and photofermentation by Rhodobacter capsulatus
A1 Marcos Sánchez, José Luis
A1 Cabrera Revuelta, Gema
A1 Hernandez, Daniel  F.
A1 Luque, Beatriz
A1 Valle Gallardo, Antonio
A1 Bolívar Pérez, Jorge
A2 BiomedicinaBiotecnología y Salud Pública
A2 Ingeniería Química y Tecnología de Alimentos
K1 Biorefinery
K1 Biodiesel
K1 Crude glycerol
K1 L-malate
K1 Bio-H2
K1 Escherichia coli
K1 Rhodobacter capsulatus
AB Biorefinery is an innovative concept for resource utilization. To further increase its efficiency, the integration of different biomass conversion technologies (integrated biorefinery) is essential. Biodiesel, a traditional biofuel, generates glycerol as an inevitable byproduct; making it an attractive carbon source for biorefineries due to its abundance, low price, and high degree of reduction. In this work, we propose an integrated two-step process of dark fermentation with Escherichia coli to produce L-malate from glycerol and photofermentation by Rhodobacter capsulatus to convert this L-malate into hydrogen, a clean and sustainable energy carrier. To this end, we optimized an E. coli L-malate-producing strain by overexpressing GlpK in the M4-Δiclr/pBAD-pck strain and scale up the process from shake flask to bioreactor using waste crude glycerol from a biodiesel biorefinery instead of pure glycerol. Under the optimized conditions, E. coli produced up to 11 g/L L-malate in 24 h. The culture medium from this dark fermentation was used to formulate an L-malate enriched medium for Rhodobacter that led to the production of 58.0 ± 6 mM H2 in 90 h.
PB BioMed Central Ltd
SN 1475-2859
YR 2025
FD 2025-11-10
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/39326
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/39326
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 06-nov-2026