SBIR Phase II: Method of Disinfecting Precursor Materials using Plant Essential Oils for a New Material Technology

该小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目旨在进一步开发并大规模展示一种生物消毒工艺，该工艺以较低的成本表现出上级蒸汽巴氏灭菌的微生物灭活效果。该工艺利用稀释浓度（0.5- 0.875体积%）的植物来源的酚和醛来抑制农业副产品（种子壳和外壳）上发现的较低水平的真菌和细菌。该演示的应用重点是一种新型材料技术，该技术使用丝状真菌将木质纤维素废物转化为合成材料（塑料和泡沫）的高性能，低成本替代品。这种生物消毒工艺可以减少83%的工艺能耗和50%以上的系统资本费用。该项目将全面量化这种消毒过程的有效性（生产量），并分析将这种技术整合到目前正在解决保护性包装行业的真菌材料生产设施中。将探索间歇和连续系统，并将根据结果开发综合经济模型。在此示范下生产的真菌材料将与现有巴氏杀菌系统生产的材料进行比较，并由客户对样品进行评估，以确保产品的采用。高能量消毒过程，高压灭菌器灭菌或巴氏杀菌，在农业，食品加工和生物技术等行业中无处不在。实施这些方法以减少或去除由于污染而可能对下游工艺有害的背景生物负载（细菌、酵母菌、霉菌）。真菌材料生产代表了这样一个过程，因为原材料污染导致产品损失和劳动力增加。植物精油（PEO）消毒技术在第一阶段研究中被证明可以提供与蒸汽巴氏灭菌相当的处理时间和上级的消毒效果;因此，该技术可以作为某些工业应用中的直接替代品。由于降低了系统复杂性和能耗，该工艺最大限度地降低了资本设备和运营成本。关于真菌产品的生产，该消毒工艺通过延长污染物灭活期（促进菌丝体快速定植或缩短孵育时间）来增强工艺耐用性。因此，可以解决真菌材料的新市场机会，同时进一步支持使用国内农业废物作为原材料的区域制造业的商业案例。最后，从这种新型消毒工艺中获得的好处允许加快交钥匙生产系统的部署和开发，以取代合成材料。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to further develop, and demonstrate at scale, a biological disinfection process that has exhibited superior microbial inactivation to steam pasteurization at a lower cost. This process leverages dilute concentrations (0.5-0.875% by volume) of plant-derived phenols and aldehydes to inactivate lower level fungi and bacteria found on agricultural byproducts (seed husks and hulls). The application focus for this demonstration is a novel material technology that converts lignocellulosic waste into a high performance, low cost replacement for synthetics (plastics and foams) using a filamentous fungus. This biological disinfection process can reduce process energy consumption by 83% and system capital expense by upwards of 50%. This project will fully quantify the efficacy of this disinfection process at scale (production volumes) as well as analyze the integration of this technique into a mycological material production facility that is presently addressing the protective packaging industry. Batch and continuous systems will be explored, and a comprehensive economic model will be developed based on the results. The mycological materials that are produced under this demonstration will be compared with materials fabricated with the existing pasteurization system, and samples will be evaluated by customers to ensure product adoption.High-embodied energy disinfection processes, autoclave sterilization or pasteurization, are ubiquitous within industries such as agriculture, food processing, and biotechnology. These methodologies are implemented to reduce or remove background bioburden (bacteria, yeast, mold) that can be detrimental to downstream processes due to contamination. Mycological materials production represents such a process since raw material contamination results in product loss and added labor. The plant essential oil (PEO) disinfection technique was proven under the Phase I research to offer a comparable process time to steam pasteurization and superior disinfection efficacy; thus this technology could serve as a drop-in replacement in some industrial applications. This process minimizes capital equipment and operations costs due a reduction in system complexity and energy consumption. In regards to the production of mycological products, this disinfection process bolsters the process robustness by extending contaminate inactivation periods which promotes rapid mycelium colonization or a reduction in incubation time. Therefore new market opportunities for mycological materials can be addressed while further supporting the business case for regional manufacturing using domestic agricultural waste as raw materials. Finally, the benefits obtained from this novel disinfection process permit an accelerated deployment and development of turnkey production systems to displace synthetic materials.