PFI-TT: Pilot-scale demonstration of an advanced biotechnology to treat toxic wastewater produced in the biofuel industry

这个创新伙伴关系-技术转化（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是解决清洁生物燃料生产过程中产生的有毒废水的挑战。近年来，利用湿生物质生产运输燃料受到越来越多的关注，因为它有可能使社会从对石油的依赖转向可再生资源，从而实现可持续工业社会的发展，这也是减少温室气体排放的有效途径。这项技术展示了生物燃料商业化的潜力，并使美国的可再生能源处于全球前沿。这项技术将推动科学发现一个变革性平台，以实现可持续的生物能源生产，培养下一代生物能源工程和环境工程/科学方面的企业家、科学家和工程师。这样的产学研合作项目将为工业合作伙伴提供实用的研究成果，为学生（研究生、本科生和K-12学生）提供互补的创业培训，并为学生提供实习机会。拟议的项目旨在展示一种创新的生物技术试点处理方法，专门针对生物燃料生产过程中产生的废水进行处理。限制生物精炼厂经济和技术可扩展性的一个瓶颈是产生的有毒废水不能被传统的废水处理系统回收。该团队之前的实验规模研究表明，一种特殊类型的海洋微生物可以用于创新的生物工艺，以减少或去除废水中的毒素。然而，该技术的可扩展性仍有待评估。为此，该项目的目标是：1)提供专门为海洋微生物量身定制的中试规模生物工艺；2)优化该生物过程的生产效率；3)评估该技术的经济可行性。预计该项目的成果将克服阻碍生物燃料生产商业化的困难。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to address the challenge - of cleaning toxic wastewater produced during biofuel production. In recent years, the production of transportation fuels from wet biomass has received increasing attention due to its promising potential to shift society’s dependence away from petroleum to renewable resources for the development of a sustainable industrial society, which is also an effective way to manage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The technology demonstrates with the potential to enable biofuel commercialization and position U.S. renewable energy at the global forefront. This technology will advance scientific discovery of a transformative platform to enable sustainable bioenergy production, train the next generation of entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers in bioenergy engineering, and environmental engineering/science. Such an industry-university collaborative project will deliver research outcomes useful for industrial partners to adopt in practice, offer complementary student (graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students) trainings in entrepreneurship, and student internships. The proposed project seeks to demonstrate an innovative biotechnology pilot treatment specifically tailored for the valorization of wastewater generated during the biofuel production. A bottleneck that limits the economic and technical scalability of biorefineries is the production of toxic wastewater that cannot be reclaimed by conventional wastewater treatment systems. The team’s prior bench-scale study has shown that a special type of marine microorganism can be used an innovative bioprocess to reduce or remove the toxins in this wastewater. However, the scalability of the technology remains to be evaluated. To this end, the objectives of this project are to: 1) deliver a pilot-scale bioprocess specifically tailored for the marine microorganism; 2) optimize the productivity of this bioprocess; and 3) assess the economic viability of the technology. It is expected that the outcome from this project will overcome difficulties impeding the commercialization of the biofuel production.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.