Thermodynamics of Ternary Water/Polymer/Solute Systems: Understanding in situ product removal in biobunatol production

杜邦的增长战略基于三个领域的技术领先地位：农业和营养、工业生物科学和先进材料。为了表彰皇后学院的相关专业知识，杜邦已承诺为CRD项目提供资金和资源，该项目侧重于后两项能力，特别是在生物燃料和先进聚合物领域。杜邦的一项标志性举措是开发一种生产生物燃料丁醇的工艺。这一过程的主要瓶颈是丁醇本身对产生丁醇的微生物的毒性。PI开发了一个非常有前途的技术平台，允许从发酵容器本身就地去除生物分子。尽管PI还证明了廉价的商业聚合物(如杜邦生产的聚合物)在理论上可以实现这种定向的生物产品去除，但丁醇从未证明过这一点，丁醇是出了名的难以从水发酵介质中去除的分子。我们建议利用第一性原理热力学方法来预测哪些类型的聚合物可以实现丁醇的去除，并在实验上证实这些预测，并为利用已识别的聚合物改进生物丁醇的生产提供概念论证。这项工作的成功完成将促进杜邦公司对聚合物-溶质相互作用的了解，可能会改进他们的生物丁醇生产技术，并将为他们的先进材料开辟新的市场(在生物技术领域)。

DuPont's Growth Strategy is based on Technology Leadership in 3 areas: Agriculture and Nutrition, Industrial Biosciences, and Advanced Materials. In recognition of relevant expertise at Queen's, DuPont has committed funds and resources for a CRD project that focuses on the latter 2 competencies, specifically in the areas of biofuels and advanced polymers. A signature initiative at DuPont is the development of a process to produce the biofuel butanol. The major bottleneck of this process is the toxicity of the butanol itself to the microorganisms that produce it. A very promising technology platform, developed by the PI, allows for the in situ removal of biomolecules from the fermentation vessel itself. Although the PI has also demonstrated that inexpensive commercial polymers (such as those produced by DuPont) can, in theory, achieve such targeted bioproduct removal, this has never been demonstrated for butanol, a molecule notoriously difficult to remove from aqueous fermentation media. We propose to utilize first principles thermodynamic methods to predict which types of polymers could achieve butanol removal, to confirm these predictions experimentally, and to provide a demonstration of concept for the improved production of biobutanol utilizing the identified polymers. The successful completion of this work will advance DuPont's understanding of polymer-solute interactions, will potentially improve their biobutanol production technology, and will identify new markets (in biotechnology) for their advanced materials.