Innovative Biochemical Engineering Approaches for a Healthy Environment

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The doubling of the earth's population in the last 50 years poses several significant challenges for society including pressure on limited food supplies, shrinking availability of safe drinking water and the rampant increase in plastic and micro-plastic wastes on a global scale. The applications of microbial systems and their components offers tremendous potential to clean up pollution and recover value by reducing the environmental footprint, develop new sustainable processes and improve human health. In particular, approximately 300 million tons of plastics are produced annually on a global scale. Only a fraction of these plastics are recycled and a much larger amount ends up as waste. Plastics in landfills, in water resources, lakes, rivers, and oceans are a serious issue. Of particular concern are microplastics (particles of plastic less than 5 mm in diameter), which can be ingested by marine organisms, endangering their life and leading to various downstream environmental problems. A second issue is the release of millions of litres of untreated water (containing high levels of nitrates and phosphates) annually into the environment. In addition, sugar laden waste waters from ethanol and corn starch industries, and road salt effluents are other challenging waste streams. These wastewaters offer great potential potential to recover value such as nutraceuticals, biofuels (by the cultivation of microalgae) or high value biopolymer (by cultivation of bacteria, yeast and fungi). The overall goals of the Bassi group in this NSERC Discovery Grant application are to investigate the applications of bio-surfactants for value recovery from wastewater streams. Over the past 15 years, the Bassi group has been engaged in research related to both phycoremediation (the application of beneficial microalgae to recover clean water and value from waste streams) and plastic waste mitigation. In both these areas, biosurfactant based research will play a significant role in developing potential new applications such as the removal of micro-plasics from wastewater streams using foam fractionation and improved techniques to grow microalgae on wastewater streams at high yields using the concept of foam based photo-bioreactors. Over the next five years, this proposed research will train 3 PhDs, 1 M.E.Sc, 5 undergraduate students. These objectives will lead to deeper understanding over a long term, for discovering new routes and sources of bio-surfactants, the cost effectiveness of bio-surfactant production and recovery and their applications as novel tools in biochemical engineering processes. The HQP trained in this proposal will provide needed skills to industry with an understanding of how to manage the significant challenges of today and harness solutions based in Canada but applicable for a global society.