Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The perspectives for biomass-derived fuels and chemicals are an ever-moving target due to uncertainties in the energy sector and inconsistent environmental policies. Grain-based ethanol and biodiesel derived from waste oils or purpose grown crops are still the predominant commercial products with a renewed interest in methane and hydrogen derived through anaerobic digestion. However, the outlook appears to involve a more diverse product portfolio and flexible conversion processes are able to handle diverse feedstocks. The current main usage for biomass derived bulk chemicals is as energy carriers, largely for the automotive sector. The onset of electric and autonomous vehicles in combination with urbanization might reduce this demand. However, high-density energy carriers will still be needed in the aviation and shipping industry and growing environmental concerns lead to a re-evaluation of the materials used in the packaging sector. Hence, biomass remains a large and attractive source for a broad range of materials and Canada is in the advantageous position of having access to extensive biomass resources not just due to their simple abundance, but also through a highly developed agricultural and forestry sector. Large scale biomass conversion technologies will likely not be realized the same as petrochemical refining and conversion technologies. The economy of scale found in the petrochemical industry cannot be transferred to bioconversion processes simply due to limitation caused by feedstock transportation (no pipelines for corn stover), availability, and homogeneity. Hence biomass conversion facilities will be specialized, medium scale plants, analogous to pulp and paper mills, an area where Canada has vast expertise and existing underutilized assets and infrastructure. Products of interest are chemical building blocks (C4 and larger) that can be further transformed and or polymerized such as succinic acid propanediol, or butanol. Significant scientific and technical breakthroughs are required to achieve competitiveness of biorefineries and the proposed research will attempt to address some of the key challenges. The proposed research has three key objectives: 1.Development of terrestrial and aquatic biomass pretreatment with deep eutectic solvents 2.Synthetic biology vs. synthetic consortia: Development of microbial mixed culture processes as a basis for rational strain development 3.Development of novel highly integrated fermentation processes