Production and Characterization of Bacterial Cellulose from Food waste: A sustainable approach

Abstract Cellulose is a natural polymer found in plant cell walls and has been used in many industries for ages. The increasing demand for cellulose is estimated to be 100–125 Giga tons per year globally, contributing to deforestation and exacerbated global warming. However, bacterial cellulose has emerged as a promising alternative to plant based cellulose due to its unique properties including biodegradability, high crystallinity, high mechanical strength, porosity and great water absorption and retention capabilities. This study aims to optimize the production of bacterial cellulose economically using readily available resources like food waste addressing environmental concerns and production costs. Utilized tea as nitrogen source and Bagasse and glucose as carbon sources were used for the production of Bacterial cellulose. SCOBY culture is used as an inoculum for production. Characterization was done by tests like FTIR, XRD, and FE-SEM. The results of bacterial cellulose formed from these substrates were then compared with the result of the standard HS media. The finding demonstrates that characterization of Bacterial cellulose layer produced from the HS media was much similar with the results of utilized tea substrate, and it has higher crystallinity. It was observed that the FTIR spectrum of BC layers formed by utilized tea media and bagasse were similar to the Standard HS media produced BC, indicating that they contain the same chemical functional bonds. In FE-SEM analysis of sugarcane bagasse bacterial cellulose are densely packed, discontinuously arranged, irregular shaped nanofibers of different diameters were observed.