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Queen's的相关专业知识，杜邦已承诺为CRD项目提供资金和资源，该项目专注于后两项能力，特别是生物燃料和先进聚合物领域。杜邦公司的一个标志性举措是开发一种生产生物燃料丁醇的工艺。该工艺的主要瓶颈是丁醇本身对生产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，可以从发酵容器中原位去除生物分子。虽然PI也证明了廉价的商业聚合物（如杜邦公司生产的聚合物）在理论上可以实现这种目标生物产物的去除，但这从未被证明用于丁醇，丁醇是一种众所周知的难以从含水发酵培养基中去除的分子。我们建议利用第一原理热力学方法来预测哪种类型的聚合物可以实现丁醇去除，以实验证实这些预测，并提供一个示范的概念，利用所确定的聚合物的生物丁醇的改进生产。这项工作的成功完成将推进杜邦公司对聚合物-溶质相互作用的理解，将有可能改善其生物丁醇生产技术，并将为其先进材料确定新的市场（生物技术）。

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.