• KOREAN JOURNAL OF PACKAGING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2024

As awareness of environmental issues continues to grow, there is an escalating demand for recycling and repurposing byproducts of agricultural and food production processes and their conversion to high-value products. Coffee is the most widely consumed beverage globally; during coffee beverage processing and consumption, byproducts such as coffee silverskin (CS), spent coffee grounds (SCGs), and oil are generated. Despite containing beneficial materials such as cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, lipids, and bioactive substances, these byproducts are typically discarded in landfills or incinerated. The utilization of CS, SCGs, and oil in the development of packaging materials holds significant potentials toward the realization of a sustainable society. To this end, considerable research efforts have been dedicated to the development of high-value materials derived from coffee byproducts, including functional fillers, polymer composites, and biodegradable polymers. Notably, CS and SCGs have been employed as functional fillers in polymer composites. Additionally, lipids extracted from SCGs have been used as plasticizers for polymers and cultured with microorganisms to produce biodegradable polymers. This review focuses on the research and development of polymer/CS and polymer/SCG composites as well as cellulose extraction and utilization from CS and SCGs and its applications, oil extraction from SCGs, and cultivation with microorganisms using extracted oil for polyhydroxyalkanoates(PHA) production.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.11
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• pp.1670-1679
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• 2020

The substantial use of fungal enzymes to degrade lignocellulosic plant biomass has widely been attributed to the extensive requirement of powerful enzyme-producing fungal strains. In this study, a two-step screening procedure for finding cellulolytic fungi, involving a miniaturized culture method with shake-flask fermentation, was proposed and demonstrated. We isolated 297 fungal strains from several cellulose-containing samples found in two different locations in Thailand. By using this screening strategy, we then selected 9 fungal strains based on their potential for cellulase production. Through sequence-based identification of these fungal isolates, 4 species in 4 genera were identified: Aspergillus terreus (3 strains: AG466, AG438 and AG499), Penicillium oxalicum (4 strains: AG452, AG496, AG498 and AG559), Talaromyces siamensis (1 strain: AG548) and Trichoderma afroharzianum (1 strain: AG500). After examining their lignocellulose degradation capacity, our data showed that P. oxalicum AG452 exhibited the highest glucose yield after saccharification of pretreated sugarcane trash, cassava pulp and coffee silverskin. In addition, Ta. siamensis AG548 produced the highest glucose yield after hydrolysis of pretreated sugarcane bagasse. Our study demonstrated that the proposed two-step screening strategy can be further applied for discovering potential cellulolytic fungi isolated from various environmental samples. Meanwhile, the fungal strains isolated in this study will prove useful in the bioconversion of agricultural lignocellulosic residues into valuable biotechnological products.