Reuse of Date Fruit Processing Waste as Substrate for Biological Nanocellulose Production – A Sustainable Disposal Approach

Date pomace (DP), the primary source of the solid wastes generated from date processing industry, characterized by high sugar concentration and elevated moisture content, it constitutes about 30% of the weight of the processed dates.In addition to the safe disposal, incorporating DP in the medium for bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) production as nutrient source can significantly reduce the production cost.This study aims to investigate the influence of the operational conditions namely the initial pH, incubation temperature, and DP juice ratio in the medium on the yield, water holding capacity, moisture content and morphology of the produced BNC.samples with constant initial pH, and fixed juice ratio were incubated at different temperatures.To explore the optimal initial pH value samples with fixed juice ratio were incubated at 30 C.Samples with different juic ratio and fixed initial pH value were incubated at 30 C.The structure and morphology of the produced BNC were tested using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM).The Maximum BNC wet and dry yields of 31.6 g/L and 0.62 g/L were achieved at an initial pH of 6, an incubation temperature of 30 C, and a juice ratio in the medium of 10%, respectively.The results FESEM revealed that doubling the DP juice ratio in the culture medium increased the porosity and regularity of the porous structure of the produced BNC.Increasing juice ratio in the medium decreased the yield, water holding capacity and moisture content of the produced BNC.Since oxygen is developed throughout the fermentation process and different types of sugars are produced from the degradation of starch elements in DP, it was difficult to establish a correlation between the sugar and oxygen consumption and the resultant BNC yield.The findings validated the feasibility of employing DP juice as a substrate for the manufacture of nanocellulose material with the added benefit of mitigating environmental pollution.