Project Description:
Large-scale antibody production at Astrazeneca (AZ) generates a significant amount of cell media waste, which has high waste management costs as well as contributes to negative environmental impact due to carbon emissions. The goal of this project is to find a secondary sustainable use for the waste media. This project proposes a process that uses microalgae to decrease the carbon content in spent media to decrease the emissions into the environment and generate valuable biomass as a byproduct. Microalgae has proven cleaning properties that show the uptake of carbon, nitrogenous waste, phosphorus, etc. from the media. The biomass created as a byproduct of the process has strong potential as supplemental feed for oyster hatcheries as it is known to have sufficient nutritional properties to sustain oysters’ entire growth cycle. Saltwater microalgae were grown in spent cell media, and their growth rates and carbon uptake were assessed. We developed a material balance model using MATLAB that predicted the produced biomass, amount of CO2 captured per day, and the biological oxygen demand changes. A proof-of-concept experiment was conducted to show successful growth of six saltwater species in spent cell media. Preliminary results show effective growth of the saltwater microalgae species through absorbance readings and cell counts. With our proof-of-concept data and material balance predictions, our project is proven to be scalable and sustainable as a means of decreasing the carbon footprint of AZ’s antibody production and other biopharmaceutical processes.
