Meeting with Richard Lobo, Malathy and Dubey
| Date | |
|---|---|
| Department | HP |
| Description | IHP meeting on scaling up |
| HP sub-branch | iHP |
| Links/media | |
| Participants | |
| Property | |
| Property 1 | |
| Property 2 | |
| Type | Meetings |
Read about: Tata chemicals, turbidostat method, stuff about bioreactor
Project Presentation: Likhith
Questions List:
- Ashli: Our two options for end products are Butanol/succinate. So we are aiming at a sustainable, but also economically viable process. Based on the market, current production and uses of both these products, which of these products would be better in terms of both economics and sustainability.
- Is there an increased demand for butanol? Make them say butanol is the better choice!
- Akash: If our supernatant has equal parts of butanol ethanol, and some pyruvate, do there exist economically viable ways to separate these products.
- Arya: What are the general industry standards we should think about for our end-products(in terms of purity and other things)
- Arya: So we want to design a bioreactor at the end of this, what are the features we need to keep in mind which might be specific to our project. Like for example, how do we get CO2 and light to reach ends properly, we want micro aerobic extraction based on our specific end products, etc. For example raceway pond vs closed flat plate, colour
- Akash: The cyanobacteria that we are working with work best at 3% CO2, whereas in the air it is about 0.05%. This got us to think maybe we could use emissions or something from some industries that will have higher CO2 percentages as input for our bioreactor. This will be helpful for us in terms of productivity and increasing incentives, and for the industries to bring down their emissions. Based on this:
- Are there government restrictions or policies that would make companies interested in reducing their emissions by using our project?
- Which industries would suit this best
- How do we go about approaching this
- What are the things we should keep in mind for this
Dubey- co-existence of co-culture, GMO: sometimes strains don't behave in the way we expect, what do we actually want to do? Initially give some food to e coli, as the reaction progresses, it can take up the sucrose from cyano.
Malathy: What is the natural product of cyano? Does e coli naturally consume sucrose? Look at other smaller molecules, or just collect the sucrose,keep possibilities open
What about feedback regulation?? How to continuously remove butanol? Increase butanol tolerance.
They did something similar with protease production.
Dubey: fermentation/doubling time of cyano is diff from e coli. Play around with conc. of cells.
Malathy: Immobilise one of the organisms. Are you doing anything to improve the efficiency of uptake of CO2?
What product? Malathy: depends on extraction process, and how readily you can use it
Industry standards: purity, reuse your waste material,
Dube: do not dispose off modified e coli anywhere. You have to take IBSC approval for disposal. RCGM(DBT), decontaminate all the waste
Bioreactor:
Malathy: depends on the industry, how much sunlight is available etc.
Co2 stuff:
Malathy: there is a mix of co2 and other effluents when it comes to industry. we won't get pure co2.
Richard: use the waste, low-cost disposal. Your process should add value.
Likhith: What should we incorporate in our design so that industries want us?
Richard: We should not limit our technology to a particular company. Other companies might be interested in GMOs. sustainable, low cost, high volume.
Dubey: no potential biosafety issue. Remove antibiotic resistance gene. Biochemical engineering is very important because we are looking at two cultures. Downstream processing: purification in a cost-effective way. Scale is the key! Price of succinate/butanol is not very high. DSP will play an important role.
Malathy: immobilization is a good solution when it comes to the extraction.
Important things we should look at:
Make sure there is a continuous extraction process.
The doubling time - the difference for E.coli and Cyano.
Look at gene to increase CO2 uptake - this might give advantage
Look at the water, biomass and all, what to do with that? - imprtant things to look at
For feedstocks - there is a limit to e coli that can be given to plants/animals and also they will be genetically modified.
Make sure you are adding value to some industry if you want to tie up with them. Cuz they wont be willing to see waste as a cost
Look at other countries that might be more open to GMO's, or to curb CO2 emissions.
Look at immobilization - malathy - not alginate, is expensive and imported.