Luminultra Technologies has signed a memorandum of understanding with New Brunswick's Centre of Excellence in Agricultural and Biotechnological Sciences (CESAB).
The partnership has been created to advance the state of technologies for assessment of microorganisms in bio-processing applications, such as wastewater and biosolids treatment, ethanol production and biogas generation.
The tools available to assess biological health, activity, performance and metabolic properties are very limited for anaerobic fermentation processes.
Since 2004, Luminultra has commercialised a test kit technology to monitor living biomass quality in real time through measurement of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the common energy carrier for all forms of life.
Whereas in the past, biological processes have been run using a combination of inferential parameters and qualitative 'operator intuition', these techniques from Luminultra enable fully quantitative measurement of biomass.
Through a combination of Luminultra technology, and knowledge of the bio-processing sector held by CESAB, the partners will make advances in establishing new performance indicators that will allow for increases in process performance.
The partners will also work to develop monitoring technologies that provide additional benefit in the measurement of activity, health, and type of microorganisms.
As part of this effort, the partners would welcome inquiries from the bio-processing sector to apply these technologies and processes at existing facilities to improve operational stability and cost-efficiency.
