Development of cost-effective and environmentally friendly technologies for the production of pharmaceuticals and biofuels

针对开发成本效益和环境友好的重要药物和生物乙醇的生产技术，我提出了两个项目的NSERC发现计划，作为我以前的研究工作的延续。项目一是对映选择性结晶拆分外消旋体的机理研究。项目二是木质纤维素生物质同步糖化发酵生产生物乙醇的建模与多目标优化。 对映体选择性结晶是一种获得对映体纯化合物的有效方法。设计和操作这样的对映体选择性结晶过程以实现所需的分离是一项具有挑战性的任务。潜在的困难是：a）需要大量的固/液平衡数据; B）存在两种竞争晶体物质; c）固体晶体中存在多晶型;以及d）缺乏有效的基于模型的优化和控制策略。该项目旨在解决所有这些空白，并旨在开发一种稳健的设计和优化策略，以便通过直接结晶获得具有稳定晶型的治疗活性单一对映体。 同时糖化发酵是将酶解与乙醇发酵相结合的一种工艺，在木质纤维素生物质的精制中得到了广泛的应用。但水解和发酵的最佳温度不同，以及许多其他操作参数的复杂影响限制了SSF工艺的生产能力。本项目将对SSF工艺进行系统建模和多目标优化，以降低操作成本，提高乙醇总收率。 该研究旨在为不同的化学和生物化学过程提供合理的设计和优化策略，并阐明与这些策略相关的基本理论。这将为工业界提供有用的信息，并将对新的增值产品的迅速商业化产生积极影响。

Targeting on developing the cost-effective and environmentally friendly technologies for the production of important pharmaceuticals and bioethanol, I propose two projects for this NSERC Discovery Program as a continuation of my previous research work. Project 1 is the mechanistic study of enantioselective crystallization for the resolution of racemic mixtures. Project 2 is the modeling and multi-objective optimization of simultaneous saccharification and fermentation for bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass. Enantioselective crystallization is a powerful technique in obtaining the enantiomeric pure chemicals. To design and operate such an enantioslective crystallization process for desired separation is a challenging task. The potential difficulties are: a) the demand for a large quantity of solid/liquid equilibrium data; b) the presence of two competing crystal species; c) the existence of polymorphism in solid crystallines; and d) the lack of an efficient model-based optimization and control strategy. This proposed project addresses all these gaps and aims to develop a robust design and optimization strategy so that therapeutically active single enantiomers with stable crystalline forms can be obtained by direct crystallization. Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF), which combines enzymatic hydrolysis with ethanol fermentation has been widely used in lingocellulosic biomass refinery. But the different temperature optima for hydrolysis and fermentation as well as the complicated effects of the many other operating parameters limit the production capacity of the SSF process. Systematic modeling and multi-objective optimization of the SSF process will be carried out in this project to reduce its operation costs and increase overall ethanol yield. The proposed research endeavors to provide rational design and optimization strategies for different chemical and biochemical processes as well as to clarify the underlying theories associated with these strategies. This will provide useful information for industry and will have an active impact on the rapid commercialization of new value-added products.