Solid-state platform (SSP) to produce terpenes from enzymatically treated textile waste with E. coli

Recycling waste has become one of the critical issues facing modern societies, with textile waste streams serving as a primary example for the recycling of materials made from cotton, PET, other plastics, and their mixtures. One method that has gained traction in recent years is enzymatic hydrolysis of textile waste and the subsequent conversion of cotton to glucose. Glucose serves as the carbon source for engineered microbes that convert it to volatile value-added chemicals such as terpenes. In this work, we present a novel strategy to produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the 'Solid-State Platform' (SSP) for the microbial synthesis of terpenes. This platform offers a sustainable approach for utilising enzymatically treated cotton-based waste and its efficient transformation by engineered Escherichia coli into VOCs, which are trapped directly as vapour by the organic overlay, dodecane, present within the SSP. The engineered microbial system is constructed from conventional inert laboratory glass, without gaskets, filters, or high-tech custom-made equipment. Using pure glucose as the carbon source 1.4 mg mL^-1 of limonene and 0.7 mg mL^-1 cineole was produced respectively using the SSP. Using enzymatically treated waste materials, specificaly glucose juice H46, 0.35 mg mL^-1 of cineole was produced by SSP. The SSP represents an alternative strategy for producing green volatile value-added chemicals and may help mitigate the environmental burden of textile disposal by broadening the assortment of recycling technologies.