The Science of Alt Protein: Deploying alternative feedstocks for biomanufacturing of food

Large-scale production of alternative proteins, oils, and specialty foods via microbial fermentation can reduce food prices, enhance nutritional value, and mitigate environmental and land-use impacts associated with traditional agricultural. At present, these benefits are often diminished by continued reliance on corn and sugarcane-derived feedstocks as primary substrates for bioconversion. At the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU) within Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they collaborate with diverse academic, national laboratory, and industrial practitioners in support of process optimization, intensification, and scale-up of emerging biomanufacturing applications. These applications include a variety of strategies designed to activate lower-cost and lower-impact fermentation feedstocks. Use of waste biomass – including agricultural wastes and forestry residues – as substrates in food applications is challenged by biomass recalcitrance, feedstock toxicity, and downstream separations challenges. Recent advances piloted at ABPDU include separation-free bioprocessing strategies and use of distillable pretreatment solvents to reduce both input costs and burdens on downstream separations. In addition to biomass resources, single-carbon and gaseous feedstocks – including biogas, ethanol plant off-gas, industrial waste gas, biomass gasification syngas, and electrochemical CO2 reduction intermediates – offer a compelling combination of low cost, high purity, and high accessibility to bioconversion. To accelerate deployment of these feedstocks, ABPDU has invested in multiplexed gas fermentation bioreactors featuring active backpressure control and dynamic supply of up to four gases in parallel. Use of these scale-down systems has catalyzed improvements in efficient flux of C1 feedstocks to protein biomass, including aerobic syngas conversion, co-conversion of multiple C1 substrates, and integrated biochemical-electrochemical reactor systems. In this webinar, Eric Sundstrom, Ph.D., and Ning Sun, Ph.D., will discuss key advancements in bioconversion of both C1 and lignocellulosic feedstocks, implications of these technologies for production of renewable food products, and the role of ABPDU as a federally-funded testbed for accelerated deployment of emerging technologies in the food sector. The general bioseparation process will also be discussed with specific case studies related to food product.