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

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/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，以及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进程，水中的金属污染是一个普遍存在的问题。例如采矿排水、金属电镀、半导体制造和太阳能电池生产。这些例子横跨成熟的和新兴的行业，但由于金属污染的可能性，每个行业都会对环境造成重大影响。此外，相关金属的损失具有经济后果，因为未回收的材料意味着在原材料利用方面严重错失了机会。这一阶段研究项目的技术目标是生产一种新的金属结合化合物，并扩大基于该化合物的水金属去除原型的规模。该项目将开发一种生产系统，用于生产能够与高亲和力的金属化合物结合的小分子天然产品。这种化合物将结合到固体基质上，从而实现从受污染的水样中去除金属含量的不同方法。现有的小规模生产和水处理原型将受到细胞和工艺工程的影响，以扩大水处理应用。这一扩展步骤被认为是建立整体技术和方法的可行性的关键。代谢工程策略将被用来提高金属结合化合物的细胞产量。过程工程将应用于该化合物的规模化生产，并评估后续的填充床柱操作，旨在不断从水样中去除金属。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这项技术。成功将产生一个规模化的原型，在面临金属污染/损失的行业中推广应用。

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.