Integrated Biorefinery Design with Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessment Tools in Polyhydroxyalkanoates Processing

Abstract

To support and move toward a sustainable bioeconomy, the production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) using renewable biomass has acquired more attention. However, expensive biomass pretreatment and low yield of PHAs pose significant disadvantages in its large-scale production. To overcome such limitations, the most recent advances in metabolic engineering strategies used to develop high-performance strains that are leading to a new manufacturing concept converting biomass to PHAs with co-products such as amino acids, proteins, biohydrogen, biosurfactants, and various fine chemicals are critically summarized. This review article presents a comprehensive roadmap that highlights the integrated biorefinery strategies, lifecycle analysis, and techno-economic assessment for sustainable and economic PHAs production. Finally, current and future challenges that must be addressed to transfer this technology to real-world applications are reviewed.