Bioprocessing Pilot Plant

The pilot plant offers fractionation and separation tools that are unique in western Canada for production of natural plant products — critically important equipment for assisting firms in the bioprocessing industry to design new technologies or improve upon old ones. While teaching undergraduate and graduate students is a key activity, co-operative research and development with industry partners is part of the facility’s mandate. Research conducted in the pilot plant can be taken directly to industry for commercialization. With its “industrial scale-up” tools, the pilot plant is the ideal facility from which many areas of crop utilization and pharmaceutical research can be supported. A key advantage of the facility is that it can operate under extreme processing conditions, enabling extractions in the presence of strong acids, strong bases, high temperatures, and high pressures. Extracted materials can also be concentrated prior to purification. Potentially useful applications are in areas as diverse as foods, biofuels, new drugs, vaccines, and nanomaterials.