Other Engineering Commons^™

Optimization Of Acid Production In Food Waste Via Anaerobic Respiration, Charles Daniels, Raymond Red Corn, Abigail S. Engelberth Phd.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one third of all food produced in world is wasted; 1.63 * 10⁹ metric tons of nutrition is lost to transportation, contamination, or neglect every year (FAO 2013). This wasted food, however, could be repurposed as a substrate for microbial conversion into useful chemicals. This research is aimed at finding the optimal conditions for bacterial colonies to generate volatile fatty acids (VFAs): resources that are used as solvents, medicines, and chemical intermediates usually generated from petroleum based resources (Drumright et al., 2000) (Roscher 2000) (Kolt et al., 2007). …