Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

With the rise of biofuels conversion using carbon sources from low-value by-products in smart waste/water treatment plant projects, there is an emerging requirement for developing upcycling methods to enhance carbon cycle management. However, the efficacy of carbon recycling in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), specifically from biomass and food waste, is still insufficiently developed in waste treatment unit processes. The enhancement of the carbon cycle can be attained by leveraging bio-cracking technology, which holds promising prospects to be an essential component of upcycling techniques. The overarching goal of this program is to advance the understanding of carbon bio-cracking for upcycling strategy specifically addresses MSW recycling valuation by developing a set of innovative technologies, including esterification and hydrogenolysis. This will be achieved through three main objectives: (1) Advance the understanding of impact of bio-cracking of operations on raw materials breaking in MSW; (2) Develop a rapid simple esterification and hydrogenolysis processes for long chain VFAs converting; and (3) Develop hybridization process optimization method that consider biofuel production after upcycling raw material. The proposed research will build upon the applicant's prior work on biofuels production using waste, which has yielded findings on utilizing carbon sources for bioenergy production from solid waste and implementing a new pretreatment method. The research will involve a balance of upcycling and bio-cracking, exploring the potential of long carbon chain applications of volatile fatty acids from MSW, reducing carbon loss, and optimizing hybrid biological/chemical processes. First, a novel bio-cracking system will be developed, securing an abundant carbohydrate polymer from long-chain VFA in MSW and enabling feasible MSW upcycling. Using this system, new approaches to the carbon cycle for energy source and upcycling for energy conversion in a high throughput bioreactor will be developed. Lastly, upcycling performance under hybrid biological/chemical processes and daily operations will be monitored to reduce carbon loss and enhance the optimization of the carbon cycle. This will create the foundation for an open-source hybridization processes decision-support platform with waste to energy. It will also train the next generation of utility managers, infrastructure planners and asset managers in advanced methods for bio-cracking, upcycling, unit process and developing carbon utilization for their efficient management. These abilities are crucial for managing the waste infrastructure in Canadian cities that are faced with climate change and recycling challenges.