Research Initiation Award: Methanogenic Waste Digestion for Tetracycline Degradation

研究启动奖（RIAs）为传统黑人学院和大学（HBCUs）中开始建立研究项目的初级教师提供支持，也为需要重新指导和重建研究项目的职业中期教师提供支持。预计该奖项有助于进一步教员？提高研究人员所在单位的研究和教学水平，并使本科生参与研究经历。本尼迪克特学院将研究如何从废物流中去除四环素，因为这些废物中与四环素相关的抗生素耐药性正在增加，并可能导致更多对人类和其他生态受体具有抗生素耐药性的病原体。本研究的方法是从工艺工程的角度出发，在小批量反应器中使用收获的猪和城市垃圾培养物，修改pH值、操作温度和固体保留时间等参数，以优化四环素降解和甲烷产率方面的性能。RIA项目的目标是利用厌氧生物废物消化，试图最大限度地利用四环素的生物降解，并利用这些废物流中的甲烷生成。在甲烷生成的背景下，生物降解含四环素的废物具有额外的优势，即使用甲烷作为操作能源使用，或作为可燃燃料对废水进行热处理，以进行四环素的热非生物破坏。本研究的教育影响是培养代表性不足的少数民族学生进行跨学科研究，将工程与微生物学相结合，并在新兴污染物去除和清洁可再生能源工程方面进行培训。新兴污染物去除和可再生能源研究和工程都是经济的强劲增长领域，对于满足未来的能源和环境需求越来越重要。RIA扩展了对四环素等药物的生物降解程度的认识，以及对复杂基质中四环素降解程度的理解。因此，这项研究很重要，因为它解决了上述问题，使全球社会受益，同时帮助在这些不断增长的研究和就业部门培训和安置代表性不足的少数群体。学生将获得微生物学、分析化学和可再生能源工程方面的动手研究技能，使他们成为环境领域或工业领域研究生水平学习的有吸引力的候选人。作为一项刺激竞争性研究（EPSCoR）管辖权的实验计划，该项目通过潜在地增加全州的研究能力来扩大地理参与。

Research Initiation Awards (RIAs) provide support for junior faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) who are starting to build a research program, as well as for mid-career faculty who need to re-direct and re-build a research program. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member?s research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the researcher's home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences.Benedict College will research how to remove tetracycline from waste streams because antibiotic resistance associated with tetracycline in these wastes is increasing, and may result in more antibiotic-resistant pathogens to humans and other ecological receptors. The approach of this study is from a process engineering perspective, to use harvested swine and municipal waste cultures in small batch reactors, modifying parameters such as pH, operating temperatures, and solids retention times to optimize performance in terms of tetracycline degradation and methane production rates. The goal of the RIA project is to utilize anaerobic biological waste digestion in an attempt to maximize biological degradation of tetracycline, and also to capitalize on the methanogenesis that occurs in these waste streams. Biologically degrading tetracycline-containing waste in the context of methanogenesis has the added advantage of using the methane for operational energy use, or as a combustible fuel to heat-treat the effluent for thermal abiological destruction of tetracycline. The educational impacts of this research are to train underrepresented minority students in cross-disciplinary research, combining engineering with microbiology, and training them in emerging contaminant removal and clean and renewable energy engineering. Emergingcontaminant removal and renewable energy research and engineering are both strong growth sectors of the economy and increasingly important to meet future energy and environmental demands.The RIA expands knowledge on the extent to which biological degradation of pharmaceuticals like tetracycline can be achieved, as well as understanding of the extent of tetracycline degradation that can be achieved in a complex matrix. The research is therefore important because it addresses the above issues, benefitting the global society, while helping to train and place under-represented minorities in these growing research and employment sectors. Students will gain hands-on research skills in microbiology, analytic chemistry, and renewable energy engineering, making them attractive candidates for graduate-level study in the environmental field or in industry. As an Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) jurisidction, the project broadens participation geographically by potentially increasing research capacity and capability statewide.