Bioprocess Plant Design for Protein

Extraction from Microalgae

Risa Dickerman, Matthew Duff, Dylan Foster, Jack Whallon, Juliana Michniak,
Maddie Petraglia, Danese Mozley, Ryan Bagalkotkar
Background Standards & Specifications
Royal DSM is a global leader in health, nutrition, and
Process Flow Diagram ASTM E3066-20: Standard Practice for Evaluating Relative Sustainability
bioscience with an overall goal of applying science to improve Involving Energy or Chemicals from Biomass
the health of humans, animals, and the Earth. ANSI/ASABE S593.1: Terminology and Definitions for Biomass
Acknowledgments to our advisors: Ben Johnson (DSM), Daniel Dong (DSM), Dr. Clay Wright, Dr. Mike Zhang Production, Harvesting and Collecting, Storage, Processing, Conversion and
Utilization

Problem Statement ASTM E1756-08: Standard Test Method for Determination of Total Solids
in Biomass
Conventional oil extraction from microalgae typically results in ASTM E3072-19: Standard Terminology for Industrial Biotechnology
low value waste streams. Our team will design a specific Environmental, Health, Safety (EHS): General Guidelines
extraction and purification process, along with necessary
equipment, to isolate peptides from algal waste for future high
value applications.
Equipment Occupancy

Waste Stream Composition

Design Challenges
● Determining the desired final product
● Equipment used for removing water
Goal & Objectives ● Creating an efficient process for removing impurities
Goal: Design a downstream bioprocess that DSM can scale-up ● Lowering overall cost of the process
to extract high value peptides from their micro-algal waste
stream. Final Product
Objectives:
● Research and record biochemical properties for DSM's
● High quality animal feed - $0.70/kg
micro-algal waste stream.
● Research high value proteins prevalent in the waste stream ● Supplemental revenue from simple
and begin to design the unit operations required for sugars/glucose - $0.50/kg
extraction. Cost Analysis
● Decide on the design criteria and specifications using a
decision matrix.
Conclusions
● Choose 2-3 potential solutions and use SuperPro to complete With the final product priced at the above revenues, and
a simulated cost analysis. determined by the Economic Analysis performed by Superpro,
● Choose the best solution and use SuperPro to finalize the it can be concluded that the payback time would be 4.66 years.
extraction bioprocess design while optimizing profitability We were able to recover 95% of desired peptide product.

Constraints & Criteria Future Work

Constraints: Criteria: Further SuperPRO optimization to reduce operation costs and
● The design must not affect ● ​The design must be maximize profit margins. Additional purification steps for
the upstream process. profitable within five years potential protein therapeutic uses. Market research for
● The design must increase of development. additional supplementary revenues from other extracted
profitability by extracting ● The design must have a compounds
valuable by-products. yield of at least 75% of the
● The design must be scalable, original oil product after References
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Biology Reader. (2021). Gel filtration chromatography. Retrieved from https://biologyreader.com/gel-filtration-chromatography.html

● The design must abide by 85% pure at the end of the Cai, X., Yang, Q., Lin, J., Fu, N., & Wang, S. (2017). A specific peptide with calcium-binding capacity from defatted schizochytrium
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environmental regulations purification process. Coherent Marketing Insights. (2019). Bioactive peptide market analysis.Retrieved from
https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/bioactive-peptide-market-3018
Harvest Right (2021). Commercial freeze dryer: Freeze dryers for commercial and business freeze drying: Harvest right™: Home freeze
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Dineshbabu, G., Goswami, G., Kumar, R., Sinha, A., & Debasish, D. (2019). Microalgae-nutritious, sustainable aqua and animal feed
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