Grant: Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants

The Biorefinery Technology Scale-Up Centre (BTSC) is a research group established at the Collège Communautaire du Nouveau-Brunswick (CCNB) that specializes in the optimization of biorefinery protocols for the acquisition of high quality products from natural biomass. Their mission is to help small and medium businesses solve biotechnical challenges associated with scaling-up production to meet commercial demands. Since their foundation, BTSC have partnered with several small and medium Canadian businesses from a wide variety of industrial sectors such as forestry, agriculture, agronomy, food and beverages and marine product valorisation. Several of these applied research projects require a series of analytical chemistry analyses to characterize the quality of raw and transformed products across all stages of their scaling up procedure. The main goal of this Applied Research Tools and Instruments (ARTI) grant application is to acquire a liquid chromatograph / mass spectrometer (LC/MS) for the BTSC. Liquid chromatography is the process of physically separating a chemical compound of interest from a given sample while mass spectrometry allows for the characterization of its chemical composition. This acquisition would allow BTSC to (1) meet all the analytical requirements needed to complete their ongoing research projects, (2) expand their range of applied research expertise, (3) attract additional future partnerships with local businesses, (4) improve the quality of training for their research staff as well as all CCNB students enrolled in the biotechnology program, and (5) improve the overall quality of their research.