Cyclone Engineers are collaborating with Cargill and Genomatica to scale-up fermentation processes in bioreactors in a new $2.5 million project. The award was announced this week at the White House Summit on the National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative.
The project starts by perfecting fermentation techniques on a small laboratory scale.
“What makes simulation and scale-up of bioreactors difficult is the fact that microorganisms, which function as small chemical factories, are heavily influenced by both the microenvironment that they are in, and also the microenvironment’s trajectory, or history,” says Dennis Vigil, professor of chemical and biological engineering “As the bioreactor size increases the heterogeneity of microenvironments increases, which makes prediction of the overall performance of the bioreactor more difficult. This is the problem we are trying to address by first understanding how microorganisms perform in a uniform homogeneous environment.”
Rodney Fox, Hershel B. Whitney Professor, Global Initiatives, is the principal investigator, joined by Vigil. Both specialize in multiphase reactor design and analysis. CBE’s Zengyi Shao, leverages her expertise in the manipulation of microbes that drive the fermentation process, while Ted Heindel, Bergles Professor in Thermal Science and a University Professor of mechanical engineering, and Alberto Passalacqua, associate professor of mechanical engineering, bring expertise in measurement and computational fluid dynamics.
Cargill and Genomatica will then team up to move the process to large-scale production of a new generation bio-based intermediate chemical product used by many industries. It will be produced in a new facility at Cargill’s Eddyville, Iowa, operation.
A portion of the funding for the project is from BioMADE, a manufacturing innovation institute supported by the Department of Defense that works to advance research directed at the manufacturing of bio-based products. Iowa State is a governing member of BioMADE.