Abstract
Succinic acid is one of the most used building blocks in different production chains. Conventionally, this carboxylic acid is produced through petrochemical routes, but can be also produced via biological routes. Many microorganisms, such as Actinobacillus succinogenes, synthesized succinic acid as an intermediate of many biochemical pathways, as the Krebs cycle. Nowadays, the industrial production of bio-succinic acid has been limited due to different critical issues, like the low productivity and yield and downstreaming processes. To improve the bio-based production, the operative conditions of the fermentation process needed to be optimized especially when agro-industrial residues were used as sugars feedstock. To this aim, in this study fermentation batch tests were performed by using different concentrations of A. succinogenes at a given glucose concentration. The results suggested that glucose consumption and succinic acid production were not directly influenced by the initial bacterial concentration respect to glucose concentration. But the best results were obtained at the ratio of bacteria:glucose equal to 1:1 and further tests will be necessary to implement succinic acid yield and productivity.
