Production and Characterizations of Bioplastic from Halophilic Bacteria Halomonas elongata BK-AG 18

• Main Author: Kurnia
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Kimia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/37928
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

With the increasing use of plastics, the trend of their production is increasing as well. Such condition, however, arising a negative impact on environment because those plastic wastes are mostly nondegradable and hence will accumulate on the ground or when they are buried in the soil will settle for long time. There are many alternative solutions to overcome the problem; one of them is by replacing petroleum based plastics with biodegradable ones, which are more decomposable by microorganisms or known as bioplastics. One of the well-known bioplastics is polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), which is typically produced by halophilic bacteria. In this study, we used halophilic bacterium Halomonas elongata BK AG-18 as a production house for PHB. This halophilic bacterium isolated from the mud crater located at Bledug Kuwu village, Purwodadi district, Central Java. The potential of Halomonas elongata BK AG-18 in producing PHB was identified by its ability to produce orange luminescence bacterial colonies under UV light on the agar medium containing nile red and 5% of NaCl. PHB production was undertaken by growing the bacteria in the modified HM medium enriched by glucose as the carbon source for 22 hours at 37oC by the aeration rate of 150 rpm. The resulted PHB was characterized its structure by FTIR and its physical property by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermal gravimetry analysis (TGA). The results of DSC showed that melting point of PHB sample was 212.1oC. The results of TGA showed that PHB sample started to decompose at 283oC, which was relatively higher than the standar PHB that started to decompose at 277oC.