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Engineering living functional biofilms offers an ecofriendly and efficient technique for the corrosion protection of metallic materials in marine environments. Its firm attachment to the metal surface is a key step to effectively improve the corrosion protection. Herein, engineered Escherichia coli biofilm with strong metal binding ability is constructed by genetically appending a metal binding domain (MBD) to extracellular amyloids. The engineered living biofilm improved the corrosion resistance of X70 carbon steel. Moreover, a biofilm‐induced mineralization layer, mainly composed of calcite, is formed on the X70 surface, which provided a stable corrosion barrier. At the end of 7‐days immersion, the icorr decreased from 5.1 ± 0.4 µA cm−2 without biofilm to 0.5 ± 0.1 µA cm−2 with E. coli MBD biofilm, resulting in a corrosion inhibition efficiency of 90.2%. It also demonstrated the corrosion protection effect for 304 stainless steel, suggesting possible broad applications of the engineered biofilm. The application of synthetic biology offers a novel approach in the development of anti‐corrosion technologies in water environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Biocorrosion first surfaced in the scientific literature when Richard H. Gaines associated corrosion with bacterial activities in 1910. It is also known as microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC). In general, it covers two scenarios. One is that microbes cause corrosion directly, which usually means microbes secrete corrosive metabolites or microbes harvest electrons from a metal for respiration to produce energy. In the second scenario, microbes are behind the initiation or acceleration of corrosion caused by a pre‐existing corrosive agent such as water and CO2, by compromising the passive film (often a metal oxide film on a metal). MIC is caused by microbial biofilms. It is everywhere around us. This work dissects some notable examples with perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In marine and industrial environments, salts and aggressive contaminants in water may cause corrosion and degradation, including acid corrosion and erosion. Super‐hydrophobic (SH) metal oxide films can keep surfaces dry by expelling water droplets. This inhibits corrosion. However, acid rain can dissolve the metal oxide films. Thus, it is necessary to protect SH films against acid erosion. In this work, a WO3 film was added on top of CuO‐coated SH copper surface using electrochemical deposition. The composite SH CuO‐WO3 film exhibited a strong acid resistance. After 48 h immersion in 0.2 N sulfuric acid, the film retained its nearly perfect micro‐nano structure with a static water contact angle of 160 ± 2°. After acid erosion, the corrosion rate in a 3.5% (w/w) NaCl solution was tested using potentiodynamic polarization curves. Its corrosion current density was found to be four orders of magnitude lower compared with CuO‐coated copper. This kind of acid resistant SH surfaces with much enhanced ability against atmospheric oxygen corrosion in the presence of salty water have potential applications in marine and other industrial environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioenergy is a renewable energy that plays an indispensable role in meeting today's ever increasing energy needs. Unlike biofuels, microbial fuel cells ( MFCs) convert energy harvested from redox reactions directly into bioelectricity. MFCs can utilize low-grade organic carbons (fuels) in waste streams. The oxidation of the fuel molecules requires biofilm catalysis. In recent years, MFCs have also been used in the electrolysis mode to produce bioproducts in laboratory tests. MFCs research has intensified in the past decade and the maximum MFCs power density output has been increased greatly and many types of waste streams have been tested. However, new breakthroughs are needed for MFCs to be practical in wastewater treatment and power generation beyond powering small sensor devices. To reduce capital and operational costs, simple and robust membrane-less MFCs reactors are desired, but these reactors require highly efficient biofilms. Newly discovered conductive cell aggregates, improved electron transport through hyperpilation via mutation or genetic recombination and other advances in biofilm engineering present opportunities. This review is an update on the recent advances on MFCs designs and operations. © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The removal of analog impurities with a very small sample size presents a major challenge in the purification of high-valued biochemicals such as those derived from fermentation or herbs. Ganoderic acid T (GA-T), an antitumor drug candidate, is very difficult to purify from the mycelia of medicinal mushroom Ganoderma lucidum due to co-purifying analog impurities. A novel pretreatment process with three consecutive chemical conversion steps, namely hydrolysis-acetylation-hydrolysis, was developed to convert two key analog impurities (7- O-ethyl GA-O and GA-Mk) to GA-T. It increased the GA-T amount in the 100 g dried mycelia from the initial 0.444 g to 1.621 g after the pretreatment, representing an apparent yield of 365% for the pretreatment. If the yield basis were the initial GA-T amount plus the GA-T amount from 100% conversion of 7- O-ethyl GA-O and GA-Mk in the crude extract, the yield, termed adjusted yield for the pretreatment in this work, would still reach 90.8%. Furthermore, the subsequent RP-HPLC purification was considerably enhanced due to the conversion of the analog impurities. This game-changer strategy achieved a daily GA-T throughput of 2.9 g with 95% purity (mass based). Even at the laboratory scale, it is now possible to produce a sufficient amount of GA-T for small-scale pharmacological and clinical evaluations. The approach of converting analog impurities that are otherwise difficult to remove to the product in a bioseparation process may be useful to achieve enhanced recovery of other medicinally useful natural products. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2012; 109:754-762. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immobilized cells are widely used in bioconversions to produce biological products as well as in wastewater treatment such as solvent removal from wastewater streams. In this work, a rate model is proposed to simulate this kind of process in an axial-flow fixed-bed column packed with porous particles containing immobilized cells. The transient model considered various mass transfer mechanisms including axial dispersion, interfacial film mass transfer, and intraparticle diffusion. Cell death in the immobilized cell system was also considered. Effects of various parameters such as kinetic constants and mass transfer parameters were studied. Operational situations such as feed fluctuation flow rate increase and two columns in series were also investigated. The model can be used to study the behavior and characteristics of immobilized cell columns in order to perform scale-up predictions of effluent profiles and for the purpose of process optimization.