Biotechnological production of itaconic acid-things you have to know.

Itaconic acid is one of the basic chemicals for the polymer industry, which can be produced on the basis of renewable raw materials. Since the middle of the twentieth century, itaconic acid has been produced industrially using the filamentous fungus Aspergillus terreus. But the demand for the organic acid is low due to the high production costs compared to alternative petrochemical manufactured raw materials.

Process development of itaconic acid production by a natural wild type strain of Aspergillus terreus to reach industrially relevant final titers.

Itaconic acid is a promising organic acid and is commercially produced by submerged fermentation of Aspergillus terreus. The cultivation process of the sensitive filamentous fungus has been studied intensively since 1932, with respect to fermentation media components, oxygen supply, shearing rate, pH value, or culture method. Whereas increased final titers were achieved over the years, the productivity has so far remained quite low.

Rational approach to optimize cellulase mixtures for hydrolysis of regenerated cellulose containing residual ionic liquid.

For the efficient production of glucose for platform chemicals or biofuels, cellulosic biomass is pretreated and subsequently hydrolyzed with cellulases. Although ionic liquids (IL) are known to effectively pretreat cellulosic biomass, the hydrolysis of IL pretreated biomass has not been optimized so far. Here, we present a semi-empirical model to rationally optimize the hydrolysis of pretreated α-cellulose - regenerated from IL and containing residual IL from the pretreatment.