Biofuels from Food Waste ─ Applications of Saccharification Using Fungal Solid State Fermentation

According to the UN's Food & Agricultural Organization (FAO), one third of food produced globally for human consumption (nearly 1.3 billion tons) is lost annually. Food waste has often been incinerated with other combustible municipal wastes for possible recovery of heat or other forms of energy, however, incineration is not cost-effective, and can cause air pollution. Due to its organics- and nutrient-rich nature, food waste could be viewed as a useful resource for production of high-value platform chemicals through fermentation. This book examines the bioconversion of food wastes to energy and the recent developments in ethanol, hydrogen, methane, and biodiesel production from food wastes.

Dr. Antoine Trzcinski received his PhD from the chemical engineering Department of Imperial College London. He developed a novel process for producing biogas from municipal solid waste and for the treatment of landfill leachate. As a Senior Research Fellow in the Nanyang Environment & Water Research Institute he continued working on solid waste treatment such as waste activated sludge and wastewater treatment in anaerobic membrane bioreactors. He was granted three patents from this work in collaboration with the Public Utilities Board of Singapore. His research interests include fouling mitigation in membrane bioreactors, characterization of soluble microbial products, identification of bacterial and archaeal strains, pharmaceutical and antibiotics removal from wastewater, fate of nanoparticles in the environment and bioelectro stimulation of microbes to improve bioprocesses through interspecies electron transfer (IET). In 2016 He joined the University of Southern Queensland as lecturer.