(517a) Liquid-Liquid Based in Situ Recovery Systems Enhance Bioproduct Production and Enable New Bioprocesses

The economics of a bioprocess are generally driven by the expense of the downstream separation of product from dilute aqueous streams. Continuous separation techniques, such as in situ product recovery (ISPR), are attractive in that they can simultaneously remove and concentrate products from bioreactors, thereby minimizing product inhibition and downstream separation cost. Although there are multiple benefits of ISPR, there are few reports of its integration with further downstream processes to recover highly pure bioproducts. This seminar will cover recent work in developing a robust ISPR system to recover carboxylic acid products from sterile monocultures, and from non-sterile anaerobic digestors. Results will be presented showing the enhanced effects the system has on microorganism titers, rates, and yields. In one application the system was able to reduce fermenter size by a factor of ~10 compared to a standard fed batch fermentation. Additionally, the system’s application to an anaerobic digestor is found to effectively arrest methanogenesis producing higher value volatile fatty acid products that can be used as platform chemicals in lieu of methane.