Tuesday, April 20, 2010
11-35

Microbial bioconversion of underutilized soybean biodiesel streams to industrial precursors and animal feed

Robert W. Nicol1, Kim Marchand1, and W. David Lubitz2. (1) School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph - Ridgetown Campus, 120 Main Street East, Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0, Canada, (2) School of Engineering, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada

The University of Guelph and CARES (Centre for Agricultural Renewable Energy and Sustainability) has recently commissioned a large-scale biodiesel production research facility.   The mandate of this facility is to investigate the economic and environmental sustainability of biodiesel production, evaluate new lipid to biodiesel conversion technologies and processes, incorporate second generation lipid feedstocks into biodiesel production, and to improve the eco-efficiency of the biodiesel transesterification process by adding value to waste streams and underutilized fractions.  Currently, two underutilized streams from soybean biodiesel production are glycerol and soybean meal and our goal is to add value to both of these streams.  A significant challenge in soybean biodiesel production is that the soybean meal is not in an easily digestible form. Swine have difficulty digesting soybean meal due to the presence of oligosaccharides.  We have identified fungal isolates that convert soybean meal oligosaccharides to monosaccharides, and have investigated the use of these isolates for improving the digestibility and other nutritional components of soybean meal. Another challenge is that the glycerol fraction derived from soybean oil biodiesel has a high pH.  We therefore evaluated the ability of alkaliphilic bacteria collected from early decline red pine plantation soil to transform glycerol to industrially relevant precursor molecules.  Incorporating fungal isolates and alkaliphilic bacteria into the larger biodiesel production process paves the way for creation of additional biodiesel, ethanol, improved animal feed and precursor molecules from one feedstock.

See more of Poster Session Two
See more of General Submissions

See more of The 32nd Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (April 19-22, 2010)