The biotechnological production of xanthan on vegetable oil industry wastewaters. Part I: Modelling and optimization

The aim of this research was to examine the possibility of using the vegetable oil industry wastewater as the basis of the cultivation media for xanthan production, using Xanthomonas campestris ATCC 13951, in order to reuse the wastewater obtained in one industry as a raw material in another. Furthermore, the aim was to optimize the composition of wastewater based media in terms of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus content. Experiments were carried out in accordance with the Box-Behnken design with three factors on three levels (glucose: 10.00- -30.00 g/L; nitrogen: 0.02-0.20 g/L; phosphorus: 0.0045-0.045 g/L) and three repetitions at the central point. The success of biosynthesis was assessed by analysing broths to determine xanthan yield, cultivation broth apparent viscosity, residual carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus content. Graphical and numerical optimization using response surface methodology was performed to determine the optimal content values of the carbon source, nitrogen, and phosphorus content. The results of graphical optimization suggest that for the defined response interval values, the defined model predicts that the xanthan production is possible when 15.00-16.00 g/L of the carbon source, 0.02-0.09 g/L of nitrogen and 0.01-0.02 g/L of phosphorus are added to the media that as a basis contains vegetable oil industry wastewater.