The demand for New Zealand wine has been growing steadily, increasing the need for sustainable disposal of winery waste. Our research focuses on developing a new bioprocess that repurposes the winery waste as the feedstock for chemical production. This new bioprocess relies on specific anaerobic chain-elongating bacteria in an open microbiome to produce medium-chain organic acids, such as caproic acid from waste organics.
In this Part IV research, we examine how different bioreactor operational conditions influence the dynamics of chain-elongating bacteria and other microbial populations in the bioreactor microbiome. This project includes three specific research objectives:
• Analyze the caproic-acid production performance of the bioprocess under different operational conditions.
• Prepare DNA samples of bioreactor microbiomes under different operational conditions.
• Quantify total bacterial, archaeal, and chain-elongating populations under different operational conditions using real-time PCR.
The results of this research will identify bioreactor operational conditions that promote the growth and performance of chain-elongating bacteria and facilitate the effective production of valuable chemicals from renewable feedstocks.
Undergraduate
None
No lab has been assigned to this project