Innovative Biochemical Engineering Approaches for a Healthy Environment

在过去50年里，地球人口翻了一番，给社会带来了几项重大挑战，包括有限的粮食供应压力、安全饮用水的供应减少以及全球范围内塑料和微塑料废物的猖獗增加。微生物系统及其组成部分的应用提供了巨大的潜力，可以通过减少环境足迹、开发新的可持续工艺和改善人类健康来清理污染和回收价值。特别是，全球每年生产约3亿吨塑料。这些塑料中只有一小部分被回收利用，而更多的最终成为废物。垃圾填埋场、水资源、湖泊、河流和海洋中的塑料是一个严重的问题。特别令人关注的是微塑料（直径小于5毫米的塑料颗粒），它们可被海洋生物摄入，危及它们的生命，并导致各种下游环境问题。第二个问题是，每年有数百万升未经处理的水（含有高浓度的硝酸盐和磷酸盐）被排放到环境中。此外，来自乙醇和玉米淀粉工业的含糖废水以及道路盐废水是其他具有挑战性的废物流。这些废水具有回收价值的巨大潜力，如营养品、生物燃料（通过培养微藻）或高价值生物聚合物（通过培养细菌、酵母和真菌）。Bassi小组在NSERC发现基金申请中的总体目标是研究生物表面活性剂在废水流价值回收中的应用。在过去的15年里，巴斯集团一直从事与藻修复（应用有益的微藻从废物流中回收清洁水和价值）和塑料废物缓解相关的研究。在这两个领域，基于生物表面活性剂的研究将在开发潜在的新应用方面发挥重要作用，例如利用泡沫分馏从废水流中去除微塑料，以及利用泡沫基光生物反应器的概念在废水流中高产地培养微藻的改进技术。在未来五年内，该计划将培养3名博士，1名硕士，5名本科生。从长远来看，这些目标将使人们对生物表面活性剂的新途径和新来源、生物表面活性剂生产和回收的成本效益以及它们在生化工程过程中作为新工具的应用有更深入的了解。本提案中培训的HQP将为行业提供所需的技能，了解如何管理当今的重大挑战，并利用基于加拿大但适用于全球社会的解决方案。

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.