Fermentor and analyses tools

在北美，作为液体燃料的生物乙醇的生产和消费正在迅速增长。例如，在美国，生物乙醇现在占所有机动车燃料消耗的1%以上。生物乙醇提供了净能源盈余，同时为农业原材料提供了一个替代市场，并减少了向环境排放的温室气体。通过提高整个生物乙醇过程的效率，有可能进一步提高净能源收益，降低整体加工成本。*我们之前已经证明，淀粉颗粒可以在一个容器中直接转化为生物乙醇，消除了烹调生物饲料材料的能源需求。在这个项目的前半部分，我们正在通过创造能够产生将淀粉颗粒直接转化为生物乙醇所需的酶的转基因酵母细胞来进一步改进这一新的同步冷淀粉水解和发酵工艺。这将通过消除购买昂贵的水解酶的需要来降低我们新工艺的成本。在这项提案的后半部分，我们正在研究新生物反应器设计的能力，以从工业废水中捕获和生物修复多环芳烃和挥发性有机化合物，包括乙醇。挥发性有机化合物会造成包括温室气体效应在内的全球污染。我们的项目涉及用浸没式循环循环生物反应器或流态化生物反应器取代目前使用的填充床生物膜反应器。浸没式生物反应器可以防止有毒效应和干燥填料，而流态化床可以由于更好的传质和防止生物反应器堵塞问题而提高性能。

Bioethanol production and consumption as a liquid fuel is growing rapidly in North America. For instance, in the United States it now represents over 1% of all motor vehicle fuel consumption.  Bioethanol provides a net energy surplus while simultaneously providing an alternate market for agricultural raw materials and reducing greenhouse gases emitted to the environment.  By improving the efficiency of the overall bioethanol process, it is possible to further improve the net energy gain and reduce the overall processing costs.  We have previously shown that starch particles can be directly converted to bioethanol in a single vessel, removing the energy requirements to cook the biological feed materials.  In the first half of this project, we are further improving this new simultaneous cold starch hydrolysis and fermentation process by creating genetically altered yeast cells capable of producing enzymes needed to directly convert starch particles to bioethanol.  This will reduce the cost of our new process by removing the need to purchase costly hydrolysis enzymes. In the second half of this proposal, we are studying the ability of new bioreactor designs to capture and bioremediate PAHs and volatile organic chemicals, including ethanol, from industrial waste streams.  VOCs contribute to global pollution including the greenhouse gas effect.  Our project involves replacing the currently used packed bed biofilm reactor with a submerged circulating loop bioreactor or a fluidized bed bioreactor.  Submerged bioreactors prevent toxic effects and drying out the packing while fluidized beds can improve performance due to better mass transfer and prevention of bioreactor plugging problems.