The Effect of Initial Sugar Concentration on Bacterial Cellulose Production Yield using Bacteria and Yeast Isolates from Kombucha in Molasses Media

Abstract

Bacteria cellulose is a type of cellulose produced by bacteria which offers a lot of advantages compared to plant cellulose due to its physicochemical properties. Because of its properties, it has a lot of potential of being used in tissue engineering, paper manufacturing, and food industry. Despite of its enormous potential, the high production cost hinders the implementation in the industrial scale. All of the previous studies produced BC using single-strain culture. The feasibility of using alternative media such as molasses has been proved for single-strain culture. Kombucha is a fermentative beverage which uses a mixed culture of yeast and bacteria to produce Kombucha tea while also producing bacterial cellulose. In this study, the production of bacterial cellulose was using a mixed culture of bacteria (K. intermedius) and yeast (B. bruxellensis) isolated from kombucha in molasses medium ranging from concentration 100 g/L, 150 g/L, and 200 g/L with acetate buffer and the addition of caffeine. The variation of molasses concentration was done as in general increasing the yield of BC by increasing the concentration of sugar cannot be done. The sugar consumption, pH changes, microbial growth, caffeine consumption, and BC yield were observed during the fermentation process. The results show that higher molasses concentration will produce a higher amount of BC. The microbes preferred to consume glucose followed with fructose and sucrose. The microbes had a very robust characteristic in consuming sugar. The addition of yeast isolate did not increase the production yield of bacterial cellulose. The increase of pH during fermentation was observed in this study which was a very rare case in BC production. The conclusion of the study is that the microbes isolated from Kombucha’s culture can be used to produce BC in formulated molasses medium effectively.