1,3-Propanediol production from crude glycerol from Jatropha biodiesel process.

The present report describes production of 1,3-propanediol by Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 15380 from crude glycerol from jatropha biodiesel process. Optimization resulted in a yield of up to 56g/L of 1,3-propanediol. A conversion rate of 0.85mol 1,3-propanediol/mol of glycerol has been obtained. Downstream processing to isolate 1,3-propanediol from the fermentation broth resulted in 99.7% pure product with a recovery of 34%. The pure 1,3-propanediol was polymerized with terephthalic acid successfully to yield polytrimethylene terephthalate.