Our overall goal for this project is to optimize the production of a water-purifying enzyme produced from food waste in order to both generate profit and benefit the environment. We hope to design a process capable of significantly reducing or completely eliminating the composting of the 15 tons of food waste Virginia Tech Dining Services produces every week.
Objectives
Obtain post-consumer food waste from Virginia Tech Dining Services to perform laboratory experiments regarding the anaerobic digestion by soil bacteria.
Study the anaerobic digestion of food waste by soil bacteria to create acetic acid.
Select an industrial enzyme that is both profitable to sell and ecofriendly.
​
Genetically engineer Bacillus subtilis to overexpress our target enzyme using acetic acid as the substrate.
​
Develop the separation of our enzyme and create a process flow diagram for a scaled-up version of our process.
Design and optimize our process in SuperPro Designer to reduce cost and make our product more profitable.
