ABSTRACT
Despite the efforts of academia and industry, PHA production and commercialization remain at low scale. This chapter reviews commercialized PHA in terms of the history of its economic achievements, pointing out remaining bottlenecks and the perspectives of its competitiveness with synthetic polymers. The analysis performed on the crystallinity showed it had the highest values for thermoplastic starch (TPS), poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) with variable 3HV content, polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT), poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), and poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL), around 68, 67, 52, 50, and 45% respectively. With the increasing demand for bioplastics, it is believed that focus on new technologies for PHA industrial production must be undertaken. Low-cost raw residues as feedstock, specialized strains free from the necessity of bioprocess sterilization, and free-solvent downstream process seem to be an interesting bioroute to decrease PHA cost to facilitate its penetration into the commodity plastic market. References.
