What Are Volatile Fatty Acids?

Volatile Fatty Acid (VFA for short) is a type of fatty acid, generally an organic acid with a carbon chain of 1 to 6 carbon atoms, including acetic acid, propionic acid, isobutyric acid, valeric acid, isovaleric acid, n- Butyric acid and so on, their common feature is that they have strong volatility, so they are called volatile fatty acids.

Volatile fatty acids

Acetic acid,

in

Volatile fatty acids can be used as a carbon source to produce degradable plastic material polyhydroxy fatty acid ester PHA.

Using Roche fungi, short-chain PHA can be obtained by culturing a mixture of glucose and propionic acid as a carbon source. In addition, other types of VFA are used as substrates for PHA production. For example, using valeric acid and glucose as substrates and using Roche fungi for 50 hours, the PHA yield can reach 90.4 g / L. ^[3]