Novel Processes for Food Safety and for Production and Bioprocessing of Biobased Value-added Products

Even though food production and storage systems are advanced, and strictly regulated in the U.S., food safety is still a concern. Biobased value-added products are produced by bioprocessing for not only food applications, but also non-food applications, but their production cost a limitation. In this project, novel technologies will be investigated for various applications and productions of biobased value-added products by bioprocessing will be enhanced by strain development, utilization of low cost media, novel bioreactor designs, and novel separation/purification methods.
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Objective 1: Novel processes and processing equipment such as that using pulsed ultraviolet light, ozone, electrolyzed oxidizing water, supercritical carbon dioxide, high hydrostatic pressure, and high impact pressure will be developed and evaluated for production of microbially safe food products. The processes will be optimized for promising applications in terms of parameters such as temperature, contact time, pressure, etc. Once the parameters are determined, pilot scale processing will be demonstrated. <p>Objective 2: Production of biobased value-added products such as antimicrobial agents, organic acids, alcohols, or pharmaceuticals will be enhanced by: (1) increasing biomass concentration in the fermentation medium by means of biofilm/immobilized cells, which yield high product concentrations in batch, fed-batch, or continuous fermentation; (2) utilization of low cost by-products or wastes from food processing as fermentation media; and (3) novel separation/purification methods. <p>Objective 3: Data collected in Objectives 1 and 2 will be used to develop PC-based real-time mathematical and numerical models for each process. These validated models will serve as powerful and useful tools for rapid and reliable prediction and control to maximize process efficiency, and for scale up for industrial applications.