PhD Thesis: Fungal-based biorefinery for food industries

Starch is a major component of our food and even materials. There are a number of companies in the world that produce starch from e.g. potato and wheat. However, the residuals of the potato and wheat ends up in dirty wastewater that is not so easy to treat by wastewater treatment plants; and the companies have to pay a lot of money to get rid of it. Now, the question is if we can convert these waste and wastewater into something useful? 

It was the topic of PhD thesis of our PhD candidate Pedro Ferreira de Souza Filho. He worked on converting these types of wastes to fungi for animal feed and also some kind of bioplastic materials. He has now nailed his thesis and will defend it in 3 weeks. I wish him good luck. Here is his PhD thesis on “Fungi-based biorefinery model for food industry waste: Progress toward a circular economy“. He has also published these articles:

1- Production of Edible Fungi from Potato Protein Liquor (PPL) in Airlift Bioreactor. 

2- Techno-Economic and Life Cycle Assessment of Wastewater Management from Potato Starch Production: Present Status and Alternative Biotreatments. 

3- Edible protein production by filamentous fungi using starch plant wastewater. 

4- Vegan-mycoprotein concentrate from pea-processing industry byproduct using edible filamentous fungi. 

5- A solvent free approach for production of films from pectin and fungal biomass.