Development of a low pH fermentation strategy for fumaric acid production by Rhizopus oryzae

Dicarboxylic acids that are produced from renewable resources are becoming attractive building blocks for the polymers industry. In this respect, fumaric acid is very interesting. Its low aqueous solubility facilitates product recovery. To avoid excessive waste salt production during downstream processing, a low pH for fumaric acid fermentation will be beneficial. Studying the influence of pH, working volume and shaking frequency on cell cultivation helped us to identify the best conditions to obtain appropriate pellet morphologies of a wild type strain of Rhizopus oryzae. Using these pellets, the effects of pH and CO2 addition were studied to determine the best conditions to produce fumaric acid in batch fermentations under nitrogen-limited conditions with glucose as carbon source. Decreasing either the fermentation pH below 5 or increasing the CO2 content of the inlet air above 10% was unfavourable for the cell-specific productivity, fumaric acid yield, and fumaric acid titer. However, switching off the pH control late in the batch phase did not affect these performance parameters and allowed achieving pH of 3.6. A concentration of 20 g L−1 of fumaric acid was obtained at pH 3.6 while the average cell mass specific productivity and fumaric acid yield were the same as at pH 5.0. Consequently, relatively modest amounts of inorganic base were required for pH control, while recovery of the acid should be relatively easy at pH 3.6.