SBIR Phase I: Treatment technology for recovery of valuable metals from industrial wastewater

这项小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的广泛影响/商业潜力是双管齐下的：去除废水中的金属污染物，以限制监管/环境成本，并回收具有经济价值的金属。由于推动我们经济的许多工业化过程，水金属污染是一个普遍存在的问题。例子包括采矿排水、金属电镀、半导体制造和太阳能电池生产。这些例子涵盖了成熟的和新兴的行业，但由于金属污染的可能性，每个行业都对环境造成了重大影响。此外，伴生金属的损失会带来经济后果，因为未回收的材料代表了原材料利用方面的重大错失机会。第一阶段项目中提出的技术将解决这些问题。第一阶段研究项目的技术目标是生产一种新型的金属结合化合物，并扩大基于该化合物的水-金属去除原型。该项目将开发一个生产系统，用于生产能够结合高亲和力金属化合物的小分子天然产物。该化合物将与固体基质结合，使从污染水样中去除金属含量的非均相方法成为可能。现有的小规模生产和水处理原型将受到细胞和过程工程的影响，以扩大水处理应用的规模。这个扩展步骤对于建立整个技术和方法的可行性至关重要。代谢工程策略将被用于提高金属结合化合物的细胞生产。工艺工程将应用于化合物的规模生产，并评估后续的填料床柱操作，该操作旨在连续地从水样中去除金属。该团队将与当地一家金属电镀公司密切合作，用现场废水样本演示该技术。成功将产生一个可扩展的原型，适用于面临金属污染/损失的行业。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is two-pronged: removal of metal contaminants in wastewater to limit regulatory/environmental costs and recovery of economically valuable metals. Water metal contamination is a ubiquitous problem due to the many industrialized processes that drive our economy. Examples include mining drainage, metal plating, semiconductor fabrication, and solar cell production. These examples straddle well-established and emerging industries but each pose significant environmental impact due to metal contamination potential. Furthermore, the loss of the associated metals carries an economic consequence as un-recovered material represents a significant missed opportunity in raw material utilization. The proposed technology in this Phase I project is poised to address these concerns.The technical objectives in this Phase I research project are to produce a novel metal binding compound and to scale-up the water-metal removal prototypes based upon this compound. The project will develop a production system for producing a small molecule natural product capable of binding metal compounds with high affinity. This compound will be bound to a solid matrix which enables a heterogeneous means of removing metal content from contaminated water samples. Existing small-scale production and water treatment prototypes will be subjected to cellular and process engineering to scale up for water treatment applications. This scaling step is considered crucial to establishing the viability of the overall technology and approach. Metabolic engineering strategies will be utilized to improve cellular production of the metal binding compound. Process engineering will be applied to scale production of the compound and to assess subsequent packed-bed column operations designed to continuously remove metals from water samples. The team will work closely with a local metal plating company to demonstrate the technology with field wastewater samples. Success will result in a scaled prototype for extended application across industries facing metal contamination/loss.