Sustainable bioproduction of fuels and added-value chemicals through the use of thermotolerant microbes and mixed cultures

This project will investigate the potential for producing energy and added value chemicals via biological routes from a number of waste biomass sources including industrial, municipal, biorefinery and agricultural wastes, hence developing the idea of localized sustainable integrated biorefieneries. In addition, the bioproduction of energy and chemicals will take place with enhanced economic and environmental sustainability, through the use of specialized thermo-tolerant microbes, and mixed microbe cultures which are able to (i) operate at elevated temperatures, hence eliminating the need of expensive cooling and heating operations (ii) produce elevated yields bypassing the need for operation at expensive sterile environments. The project aims to assess the efficiency of the novel thermo-tolerant microbes such as A. pasteurianus and Z. mobilis as well as welldefined mixed cultures from single-culture isolates, for the bioproduction of biofuels, such as bioethanol and added-value chemicals such as lactic acid, in terms of yield and productivity at elevated temperatures (up to 50oC) through a combination of fermentation experiments from the laboratory to the pilot scale (0.5-20L) and computational models from the kinetic/macroscopic level to the metabolic level. The developed kinetic computational models will be used to calculate optimal operating conditions that maximise the bioproduction of desired products, while the metabolic models will be used to elucidate the mechanisms of strain tolerance to elevated temperatures as well as to identify in a systematic way optimal culture mixtures. A number of novel thermotolerant microbes and mixed cultures will be provided by the Core to Core program, an innovative international network for the exploitation of microbes from tropical areas.