Motivation and Goals of this position
Palm oil is a very productive crop. It offers a far greater yield at a lower cost of production than other vegetable oils. Global production of and demand for palm oil is increasing rapidly, but such expansion comes at the expense of tropical forests. We produce palm oil sustainably! We already successfully performed a feasibility study, it works!
Circular Economy solutions focus on the production of high value products from renewable resources and the usage of industrial waste streams. In recent years, our extremophiles team has developed an innovative process for biological treatment of industrial waste water. By using extreme organisms, organic components in the waste water can be utilized to form biomass and bio-based products. In this way, we are able to offer a sustainable way for treatment of industrial brine and provide a solution for circular economy.
This project offers the unique opportunity to explore a new route of producing palm oil derivatives using extremophile organisms. The goal is to develop a quantitative bioprocess using sophisticated bioreactor environment, which comprises:
- Bioreactor runs using Design of Experiments approaches to explore the relationship between productivity and process parameters
- Analytics of substrates, metabolites and product derivatives
- First downstream development to estimate recovery yield of the entire process chain
- Data analysis using advanced data science tools
- Projection of results for ecologic and economic assessment for scale up
Requirements
- Master of Science in Bioprocess Technology, Process Engineering, Biotechnology or similar
- Background in bioprocess technology
- Curiosity and patience to transfer established bioprocessing methods to the emerging field of Circular Economy
- Sensitivity for data analysis and statistical assessment of large data sets
- A superior command of English is required
- You should be accustomed to networked critical analytical thinking, scientifically interested and able to work in a team respecting tight project timelines
Opportunities
This work will be performed in cooperation with a dynamic start up company and at the Competence Center Chase, run at TU WIEN, Research Area of Biochemical Engineering and can start July 1st 2022 and is scheduled for 15 months. This research and development position has the potential to be extrapolated to obtain a PhD.
We offer a highly interesting, diversified position comprising bioprocess technology projected on circular economy bioprocesses in tight cooperation applied basic science projects with a perspective to join the start up company active in this emerging field.
This work is scheduled for 15 months.
The monthly minimum wage is currently € 2’237,- (14x per year), before tax at a 30h/week employment. Applicants have no claim for reimbursement of travel costs arising from the recording process. The university aims to increase the proportion of women especially in scientific personnel and encourages qualified women to apply.
The TU Wien aims to increase the proportion of women and encourages qualified women to apply.