Recent Updates on Polyhydroxyalkanoate Quantification

230 to 330 °C, producing the respective 2-alkenoic acid and some other products which can be detected via GC-MS [19-22]. In this study, the biomass and standard PHA were pyrolysed in a pyrolysis chamber under nitrogen flux at 500 °C for 100 s and a heating rate of 10 °Cs h The thermal treatment completely degraded the polymer. The pyrolysis products were spiked with an internal standard solution and eluted using acetonitrile. The resulting solution was then injected into the GC-FID. The results revealed that the main products from the pyrolysis of PHA were in satisfactory correlation with the concentration of PHA. The relative standard deviation of the pyrolysis/GG-FID method was lower than 15%. These results were found to be comparable to that of the methanolysis process, but the sample preparation required is more time-effective. 

The method for the rapid quantification of PHA was achieved not only by introducing the fluorescence Nile red or NBA stains as previously discussed, but by also using infrared spectroscopy. Similar to the dye staining method, infrared spectroscopy avoids the use of solvents, and requires minimal sample volume and preparation 

Lemoigne, Bulletin de la Societe de Chimie Biologique, 1926, 8, 770. [In French] 

Braunegg, B. Sonnleitner and R.M. Lafferty, European Journal of Applied Microbiology, 1978, 6, 1, 29. 

Steinbuchel and Y. Poirier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1998, 95, 13397. 

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