PFI-TT: Pilot-scale demonstration of an advanced biotechnology to treat toxic wastewater produced in the biofuel industry

这一创新-技术转化伙伴关系(PFI-TT)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是解决清洁生物燃料生产过程中产生的有毒废水的挑战。近年来，利用湿生物质生产交通燃料受到越来越多的关注，因为它有望将社会对石油的依赖转移到可再生资源上，以发展可持续的工业社会，这也是管理温室气体排放的有效途径。这项技术展示了实现生物燃料商业化的潜力，并将美国的可再生能源定位在全球前沿。这项技术将推动对变革性平台的科学发现，以实现可持续的生物能源生产，培训下一代生物能源工程和环境工程/科学方面的企业家、科学家和工程师。这样的产学合作项目将提供有益于行业合作伙伴在实践中采用的研究成果，提供互补的学生(研究生、本科生和K-12学生)创业培训和学生实习。拟议的项目旨在展示一种创新的生物技术试点处理方法，专门用于生物燃料生产过程中产生的废水的有价化。限制生物炼油厂经济和技术可扩展性的一个瓶颈是产生传统废水处理系统无法回收的有毒废水。该团队先前的实验室规模研究表明，可以使用一种特殊类型的海洋微生物作为一种创新的生物过程来减少或去除废水中的毒素。然而，该技术的可扩展性仍有待评估。为此，该项目的目标是：1)提供专门为海洋微生物量身定做的中试规模的生物过程；2)优化这一生物过程的生产力；3)评估该技术的经济可行性。预计该项目的成果将克服阻碍生物燃料生产商业化的困难。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to address the challenge - of cleaning toxic wastewater produced during biofuel production. In recent years, the production of transportation fuels from wet biomass has received increasing attention due to its promising potential to shift society’s dependence away from petroleum to renewable resources for the development of a sustainable industrial society, which is also an effective way to manage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The technology demonstrates with the potential to enable biofuel commercialization and position U.S. renewable energy at the global forefront. This technology will advance scientific discovery of a transformative platform to enable sustainable bioenergy production, train the next generation of entrepreneurs, scientists, and engineers in bioenergy engineering, and environmental engineering/science. Such an industry-university collaborative project will deliver research outcomes useful for industrial partners to adopt in practice, offer complementary student (graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 students) trainings in entrepreneurship, and student internships. The proposed project seeks to demonstrate an innovative biotechnology pilot treatment specifically tailored for the valorization of wastewater generated during the biofuel production. A bottleneck that limits the economic and technical scalability of biorefineries is the production of toxic wastewater that cannot be reclaimed by conventional wastewater treatment systems. The team’s prior bench-scale study has shown that a special type of marine microorganism can be used an innovative bioprocess to reduce or remove the toxins in this wastewater. However, the scalability of the technology remains to be evaluated. To this end, the objectives of this project are to: 1) deliver a pilot-scale bioprocess specifically tailored for the marine microorganism; 2) optimize the productivity of this bioprocess; and 3) assess the economic viability of the technology. It is expected that the outcome from this project will overcome difficulties impeding the commercialization of the biofuel production.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.