Research of Bioprocess Engineering
Our research area encompasses everything between substrate (eg. light, CO2, sugar, lignocellulose) and product (food, pharmaceuticals, fuels, platform chemicals). That includes pretreatment of substrates, bioconversion and downstream processing, all from lab to pilot scale. Drivers are high quality products and high efficiency conversions with high volumetric productivity.
Photo right: ATPS of red microalgae, Catalina Suarez & Camilo Muñoz, Red microalgae extracted with Aqueous two phase systems. Taken at BPE lab, September 2016
Research is organized in four research lines
Research is organized in four research lines
Microbial Biotechnology
Mission: To seek solutions to eficiently convert biomass into chemicals and fuels using mirco-organisms.
Microalgal Biotechnology
Mission: Develop sustainable processes for cost-effective and sustainable conversion of sunlight into functional products by photosynthetic mirco-organisms.
Animal Cell Biotechnology
Mission: Develop optimal and scalable processes for the production of biopharmaceuticals like proteins, vaccines and sponge-derived products.
Biorefinery
Mission: Research and develop new separation technologies and apply these on a variety of fermentative biomasses, thereby producing new biological products.