Our Idea

Our aim is to extract 1-dodecanol(C12H26O) via in vitro degradation of Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS) from contaminated water. This would be done in Escherichia coli(E.coli) BL21(DE3) strain using alkyl sulfatase protein (SdsA1) derived from Pseudomonas sp. ATCC 19151 where it is has been shown to be responsible for degrading SDS into 1-dodecanol.
We plan to achieve this in three steps:
● Extracellular release of SdsA1 by E.coli BL21(DE3) via attachment of N-terminal secretion signal sequence pelB or OmpT.
● This is followed by the action of alkyl sulfatase(SdsA1) on SDS resulting in the production of 1-dodecanol within the water sample.
● Separation and purification of 1-dodecanol from the sample.
Application in water conservation
Applications in Industry
❖ Uses of 1-Dodecanol in Industries
In 1993, the European demand of dodecanol, saturated 12-carbon fatty alcohol was around 60 thousand tons per year. Dodecanol can be obtained from palm kernel or coconut oil fatty acids and methyl esters by hydrogenation. In cosmetics, dodecanol can be used as an emollient.
An exhaustible ingredient, 1-Dodecanol is found to have its uses in a lot of products such as in steel cleaning and furnishing care products. It is also used as a drag reducing agents for pipelining for petroleum extraction. Many laundry and dishwashing products like SDS are made using it. Fatty alcohols like dodecanol are used particularly in bottle washing and metal cleaning products. It also finds use in synthetic detergents, lube additives, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, rubber, textiles, perfumes, and as a flavoring agent. For use in other industries like textiles, leather, plastics, pharmaceuticals and paper, dodecanol imparts properties such as that of a leveling agent, bacteriostatic, water evaporation retardant, coupling agent, plasticizer and anti-corrosion agent.
Our strategy focuses on generating dodecanol from only contaminated water from various industrial and household sources. The major benefits of our product will be-
● Extracted from waste-water, thus recycling and reducing waste.
● The synthetic biological procedure as a manufacturing tool, reducing the cost of the project. The major benefit of our project would be the high-quality production of 1-dodecanol as compared to those produced in industry use which is around 65 percent pure only. Our goal is to extract 1-dodecanol from the bio-renewable process rather than affecting the biodiversity. Our project has potential applications in encouraging water conservation by making recycling of contaminated water into an economically productive activity by the generation of 1-dodecanol. This has both an environmental impact as well as economic value.

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