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For the last few decades, PHBs have been used to address issues around environmental pollution. This is due to their biodegradable nature when compared with conventional plastics. Moreover, their 100% biodegradability combined with biocompatibility has secured a place for PHBs in many industrial applications such as biomedical, packaging, tissue engineering and drug delivery. However, properties such as brittleness, thermal instability and narrow processing window limit the application of PHBs in many industrial applications. Therefore, in order to overcome this setback, PHBs are usually blended with other polymers, fibres or additives to obtain PHB-based composites with optimum properties. PHBs are a group of PHAs that are synthesized and stored by many microorganisms as a source of carbon and energy. With the growing environmental concerns, there is an increasing demand for the production of PHB-based materials on a larger scale. However, the major problem facing by large-scale production of PHB right now is the high cost of production. In spite of the many attempts to reduce the cost of production, there is still a need for more ways of significantly reducing the production cost. Some of the ways are briefly mentioned in this chapter. This chapter is aimed at providing a detailed discussion on the production and applications of microbial PHBs. |
