Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Energy-recovering biotechnologies have drawn tremendous attention in these days, as energy security and climate change become societal issues. Of them, anaerobic membrane bioreactor producing methane, microbial electrochemical cell (MEC) generating electricity or hydrogen gas, or biofibre production from agricultural wastes is very attractive in that we can recover valuable energy from waste biomass, along with its stabilization. To commercialize these energy-generating biotechnologies, we should address several limitations. One of them is to control the growth of microorganisms because waste biomass typically contains microbial sources, resulting in complicated interactions among microorganisms. Interested microorganisms (e.g., hydrogenotrophic methanogens in anaerobic membrane bioreactor or anode-respiring bacteria in the MEC) would be outcompeted by other microbes having large growth yield or kinetic parameters, which can fail bioprocess performance. In contrast, unknown syntrophic interactions among microorganisms could improve energy recovery. For these reasons, to control, monitor, or understand the growths of interested microorganisms or microbial interactions is significant for the success of the energy recovery bioprocesses. The proposed research can enables us to address the main limitation in these energy-recovering bioprocesses: understanding, managing, and identifying microorganisms that provides useful energy from waste biomass. This project requests molecular biology tools that include quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction equipment, thermocycler, centrifuge, Nanodrop, UV illuminator, and adjustable pipettes, which allow us to identify or monitor target microorganisms in a given bioprocess. Furthermore, we can understand microbial interactions among targeted microorganisms and other microbes in mixed culture bioprocesses. The success of this research will accelerate the commercialization of these energy-recovering biotechnologies from waste biomass, which can provide renewable, carbon-neutral, and pollution-free energy for society.