Biosurfactant process engineering and a new era of white unit operations

深水地平线爆炸和从Macondo油井泄漏到墨西哥湾的石油说明了我们在开采石油及其衍生产品时做出的双重妥协：首先，发生泄漏的极端环境是石油供应有限和生产成本日益昂贵的症状。其次，由石油制成的化学品和产品，包括用于管理泄漏的660万升分散剂，在环境中往往是有毒和持久的。生物表面活性剂是自然界产生的各种化学物质，可以帮助改变事物之间的表面--例如，新生婴儿皱缩的肺中的粘性力量被生物表面活性剂削弱，使她能够第一次呼吸，以及其他值得注意的东西。通过发酵生产的生物表面活性剂有可能在许多任务中超越传统表面活性剂，比如清理漏油后的污染，净化老工厂留下的有毒地面，提高面霜等个人护理产品的质量，或洗衣粉等家用产品的质量。不仅如此，从它们被制造到被丢弃，从根本上说，它们在整个生命周期中也更可持续。然而，目前生物表面活性剂的生产成本太高，无法广泛使用--按重量计算，它们的购买成本是黄金的十倍或一百倍。这是因为目前可用的发酵生产能力是基于旧的反应器技术。这项研究将推进导致生物表面活性剂生产成本高昂的过程工程科学，并提供一套协调的解决方案，使生物表面活性剂的商业可行性，从而更广泛地开发生物表面活性剂。在这一成功的基础上，研究小组还将致力于将这种添加新工程的方式应用于更广泛的生物生产材料、化学品和燃料，以降低生产成本，并帮助使它们成为日常用品，如今天的汽油和洗衣粉。

The Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil leak from the Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico illustrate the twin compromises made when we exploit petroleum and its derived products: Firstly, the extreme environment where the leak occurred is a symptom of petroleum oil's finite supply and its increasingly expensive production. Secondly, chemicals and products made out of petroleum, including the 6.6 million litres of dispersants used to manage the spill, tend to be toxic and persistent in the environment. Biosurfactants are the various chemicals produced by nature to help change the surfaces that occur between things - for example, the stickiness forces in a new born baby's scrunched up lungs are weakened by biosurfactants and enable her to breathe in for the first time, and other remarkable things. Biosurfactants produced through fermentation have the potential to outperform traditional surfactants for many tasks, such as cleaning up after oil spills, decontamination ground left toxic by old factories, improving the quality of personal care products like face creams or household products like laundry powders. Not only this, they are also fundamentally more sustainable through their whole life from when they are made to to when they are disposed of. However, the cost of production of biosurfactants is currently far too high to make their widespread use possible - by weight they are ten or a hundred times more expensive to buy than gold. This is because the currently available fermentation production capacity is based around old reactor technology. This research will advance the process engineering science underlying the high cost of biosurfactant production and deliver a coordinated set of solutions which will enable commercial viability, and therefore more widespread exploitation, of biosurfactants.Based on this success, the research group will also work to apply this way of adding new engineering to reduce production cost to a wider range of what could be very useful biologically produced materials, chemicals and fuels and help make them become everyday things like petrol and washing powders are today.