Abstract
The community college response to the need for skilled workers has paralleled the development of industrial biotechnology, dating back to the mid-1980s and the first programs devoted to biopharmaceutical manufacturing at Contra Costa in northern California and at Alamance Community College near Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. The early 1990s brought the development of biotechnology skill standards and a flurry of new biotechnology training programs. In the early 2000s, the Northeast Biomanufacturing Center and Collaborative (NBC2) led the development of biomanufacturing skill standards, and many more biotechnology programs with a biomanufacturing component were established, particularly in the Northeast.
In 2005, the National Science Foundation (NSF)-Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Northeast Biomanufacturing Center and Collaborative was established with a web presence at
As our panelists will attest to and describe from their own individual experiences, the effort to develop and implement biomanufacturing training programs, to identify the skill sets needed for success in the emerging biofuels and biobased products industries, and to provide students with the appropriate classroom, laboratory, and internship experience and opportunities has greatly benefited from, and in many cases been made possible through collaboration and support from industry partners. In fact, if it were not for Lonza Biopharmaceuticals, a contract biomanufacturer located next door to Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, NH, we would not be having this discussion today. That was the first company I interacted with in the early 1990s to develop a training program for them, and that effort led to the formation of the NBC2 network and the development of the training curriculum.
I would like to begin our discussion with Kelly King, of Pacific Biodiesel Technologies (PBT), which is particularly admirable because of the way it was founded in 1996 and the design of its latest facility in Kea'au, HI. The company is a model of recycling and sustainability. It produces energy by converting local supplies of fry and grease trap oil in a renewable and environmentally friendly manner. Kelly, can you explain your company's origins and briefly describe its 17-year history in the development of biodiesel?
Those memories, together with one of our maintenance accounts at the time, led Bob to begin problem-solving and to the idea of developing biodiesel from used cooking oil (UCO). The account was for maintaining the generator for the landfill operator who was composting used cooking oils and grease along with the green waste; he often complained about the oil spontaneously combusting and causing fires that were especially dangerous when it was windy. There was some research going on at the University of Idaho at the time, and we partnered with them and built our first UCO to biodiesel processing facility in Maui in 1996.
The first impetus for getting this off the ground was the goal to recycle the used cooking oil. When it worked, and Bob was driving his trucks around on the fuel we produced, we envisioned this as having big potential for fuel production. But it turned out to be very difficult to get folks onboard with biodiesel–and it still is in many ways with any kind of biofuel, especially in the trucking industry and with heavy fuel users that are so married to the idea of fossil fuels. We were getting a lot of requests to build biodiesel plants for other people to handle their waste cooking oil, but we had to rethink the idea that we were going to grow the fuel industry. One of the factors affecting the growth of the biofuels industry throughout this time was the lack of consistent, reliable support from the federal government. While there were programs to incentivize biofuels, they were designed to last only a few years and then they would run out of funds. It is difficult to get people to invest in an industry in which they cannot count on an incentive for more than 2 or 3 years, especially given that we are in competition with a very mature industry that has been heavily subsidized for decades.
During this time, PBT started a R&D facility in Salem, Oregon, where we have been advancing the technology to make the process more efficient. We have since also refocused our efforts in Hawaii on the production of fuel instead of on building plants for other people, and on making the technology more efficient. That has been the emphasis of our business model for the past 5–6 years. We also spend a lot of time lobbying at the state and federal level for supporting policies and funding programs.
We are now also emphasizing new feedstock development and have added distillation capabilities to be able to handle grease trap feedstock and degraded oils, and are also expanding into agricultural feedstocks and partnering with local farmers on projects that will yield by-products and co-products that will also help the cattle industry in Hawaii.
What we are seeing in the industry is that 5–10 million gallons of production is the sweet-spot for community-scale production, and it is a better model to have several of these situated in different communities rather than to have one larger 50 million gallon biodiesel plant, which entails transporting feedstock from neighboring communities, states, and even countries. Then you also have to figure out distribution for that larger-scale model. When the economy crashed, the biodiesel facilities that went down first were the very large ones, because they cannot survive that many days of not processing, whereas at our scale, we can survive a couple of weeks or so of delayed production.
PBT currently has 50 employees on three islands in the State of Hawaii, and we are involved in the management of the plant of our affiliate in Salem, which employees 80–90 people. When we opened our newest facility in Kea'au, which has an annual capacity of more than 5 million gallons of biodiesel, we brought a few people over from Salem to help train the new employees, and one of them stayed on to work at the facility, so that we now have a small pool of experienced workers in the company that we can move around and rely on for training purposes. But it is difficult, and we would like to have more help from the federal government in terms of grants to help with training or optimizing the production process.
If people have basic skills in mechanical or process know-how, for example, and an understanding of how to use lab equipment, we can train them in our specific process technology. We do not expect to find people who are trained to work in our specific process, as we have honed it to a level that we feel is the most efficient in the country for producing biodiesel at the community scale. We understand that we will have to do some training. But prospective employees should have basic skills; know how to use certain instruments, how to take measurements, how to identify and write standard operating procedures (SOPs), and things like that. They should have some basic knowledge of biofuels and know the difference between the different types of biofuels, and then they can specialize from that point.
There is a lot of value in 2-year degree programs that train students in basic skill sets and at the end of the 2 years they know in what area they then want to specialize. They may have known that they wanted to work in bioenergy and biofuels, but did not know if they wanted to specialize in engineering, processing, testing, chemistry, sales, research, or even political lobbying/legal support for the industry. When we are looking for employees, even though we know we will still need to train them, it is not enough for a person to have a broad-based background, they need to have some specific skills.
Kuehnle AgroSystems is an example of a smaller scale bioproducts development group in Oahu, Hawaii. Heidi, can you please describe KAS's evolution and the type of work KAS is pursuing at its facility at the Manoa Innovation Center, as well as the types of technician skills needed to support your company's day-to-day activities?
Once we get those microbes into the field, our biologists will interact with our operational and mechanical engineers for the production of biomass from those microbes. They have to adhere to strict safety and quality assurance requirements. Often we are growing microbes that have not been scaled before, so there is no “cookbook” on how to fine-tune general methods for specific microbes. These activities require routine lab work, field support, creative thinking, active team participation, excellent communication skills (for communicating with each other and with management), a comfort level with performing comparative evaluations, and attention to detail and documentation.
Technician skill sets on the R&D side, regardless of the algae-based products you are developing, include routine laboratory support work. And we also have our own specialized skills, such as microbe collection in the field and how to do that with a proper chain of custody, microbe selection, genetic analysis and fingerprinting, microbial introductions into the company library, phenotype screening and identifying traits of potential industrial value, and developing and optimizing nutrient media and other growing conditions around these microbes. We also have skill sets based on developing sterile techniques that a microbiologist or plant biologist would typically use. Microalgal cultures need to be axenic and be maintained in that state–which is also an art–so you do not lose your culture. Other skills include knowledge of packaging, labeling protocols, and understanding the regulations related to transporting live biologicals, and these are rather unique to our company.
KAS got its start in the mid-2000s as an algae-based biofuels company and has since expanded into the areas of algae-based specialty bioproducts, wastewater treatment, and nutritional needs. We are still active in the biofuels area, and an oil refinery still represents an ideal customer, not only from the aspect of bioenergy or the BTU value of algae, but also the use of industrial effluents to produce those BTU values. Biorefineries can reduce their waste and save operational expenses and gain BTU value onsite. That is the basis of our relationship with Chevron Hawaii, in which Chevron served as a site host for a demonstration project directed to using CO2 waste streams from the oil refinery, waste water, and other nonpotable water from the site to produce algae in our specially designed closed growing systems used for CO2 capture (see Catalyzing Innovation: “Strategic Alliances Create Path to Commercialization for a Microalgae-Focused Start-Up,” on page 286). It was the first demonstration project in the US conducted on-site at a refinery to recycle waste streams and produce valuable algae products. With other industry partners, General Atomics and Hawaii BioEnergy, the algae produced were used to generate even larger amounts–tonnage–of biomass earmarked for conversion to biojet fuel. The knowledge learned from this project has now allowed KAS to transition to a commercial focus on wastewater remediation with concurrent CO2 recycling and algae generation at industrial sites.
A 2011 analysis conducted by the San Diego County of Governments economic bureau reported that the algae sector alone provides the San Diego region with 466 direct jobs, $81 million in direct economic activity, and $157 million in total economic activity annually. With increasing pressure on fossil fuels and the movement to develop clean, renewable alternative energy, the biofuels sector is set to grow at an impressive pace, with a concomitant increasing demand for a well-trained workforce.
Mike, can you please chronicle the early relationship between a local biotechnology company and MiraCosta College that led to the start of the MiraCosta College Bioprocessing Program in 2004, and describe the more recent relationship with the biofuels industry that led to MiraCosta College offering an Educating and Developing Workers for the Green Economy (EDGE) Biofuels Certificate?
This idea originated with Idec's General Manager who was going to be running the facility, and that relationship made this partnership really special. Idec dedicated a person to work almost full-time with us. She looked at other programs around the country, saw what was working, and helped us start our program. Idec, which by that point had become BiogenIdec, gave us funding to hire another faculty member, for equipment, and for facility remodeling so we could have a dedicated space. It was the strength of that partnership that motivated MiraCosta's Board of Trustees to commit to some of the costs of the Bioprocessing Program, which has now been in place since 2004 (see Catalyzing Innovation: “Putting Life to Work: Tales of Community and Collaboration in Industrial Biotechnician Education” on page 282).
At one point, when I was performing a review of an associate faculty member, Dr. Elmar Schmid, we started talking about his interests. He was teaching a general biology class at the time, and he was trying to start a biofuels-related technology company. Through MiraCosta's relationship with NBC2, we were able to acquire some seed funding for him to develop a short-course called Biofuels Production and Analysis. In our Bioprocessing Program we offer a bedrock coursework of basic lab skills and an overview of the industry and regulations, and then we build on this with one-unit classes on specialized topics or techniques. Dr. Schmid started offering his course in 2009, and it was the first time we dipped our toe into the educational waters around biofuels. It was not all that different from what we already offered in our bioprocessing program; it was another type of cell-based product, but involving different organisms and different types of purifications, and it was a good fit.
The word got out in our region, and as a group of educators, government organizations, and local industry trade groups got together to go after some funding they invited us to be a part of that effort. That led to the development of the broader EDGE initiative, which represents a latticed approach to technician training. We received funding through EDGE to develop a community college-based training program leading to a Biofuels Certificate. University of California San Diego (UCSD) took the lead in developing a post-baccalaureate certificate, and they are working on a master's level certificate as well. All of this involves microalgae-based biofuels production. These partnerships and collaborations between academia, industry, and government are so important.
We began our technician-training program not thinking about biomanufacturing per se, but with the aim of giving undergraduates research experience. We are not trying to compete with four year research universities. We are using undergraduate research as an undergraduate training platform for two main reasons. It is powerful for developing critical thinking and troubleshooting skills, which students need as they enter the workforce. It also gives students first-hand exposure to what scientists actually do in the lab. It is not typical “cookbook” science lab education. It is more open-ended and the students and teachers have to solve things together.
In the world of research, more experiments fail than succeed. Our students become familiar with experiments that fail, but maybe don't think of them as failures in the traditional connotation. Failure is the greatest teacher there is, and that is what we try to emphasize to our students; that these are the types of situations you will encounter in the workforce, and you can learn from them.
But several years ago, here, as in the rest of the country, the economy soured, and to a certain extent the biotech industry contracted and we had to get more creative in finding places for our students to use the skills that they had learned in our program. We started looking more heavily into the greater Houston area. Houston has a very diverse economy and is the energy capital of the world. The biofuels industry is not very mature here, and some more cynical views see us as competing with more traditional oil and gas industries, but these same companies are also investing in biofuels research and development. We were looking to diversify the types of partners that work with us.
Another circumstance that led us down this path was a local bond referendum about three years ago that led to a massive expansion of Lone Star College Montgomery and of our college system as a whole. One of the benefits our biotech program received was a much expanded biotech lab space that was part of a new Health Sciences building. That allowed us to repurpose our existing lab space, and we decided to create a platform for authentic scientific research as an educational experience for our undergraduates, which is a rare opportunity in a community college setting. This diversification of our program and new emphasis on research led us down a biofuels and biomanufacturing path.
We also had an 1,800 square foot greenhouse on campus that has had several functions during its existence, but most recently was purposeless and we wanted to give it a purpose. With that in mind, something else I felt was missing in many biotech curricula was the process of scaling, and since we were beginning to move into biofuels and biomanufacturing, this offered a wonderful opportunity to allow our students to experience firsthand some of the challenges associated with going from lab-scale to pilot-scale. The greenhouse served as the centerpiece for what we now refer to as the “biorefinery” on our campus.
We have been able to get to where we are today because of what I describe as unexpected support from unexpected sources–those being industry partners, and not just from our local area, but from other places around the country. That support has included funding, equipment donations, willingness to take on interns and give us secondary projects that they may not have the time or interest to invest in. The heart of all of this has been partnership.
Michelle Coleman, a graduate of Danny's program at Lone Star College, is working for Huntsman Advanced Technology Center, an advanced materials company, where she is developing renewable surfactants from microalgae to replace petroleum-derived surfactants. Michelle, how did you first learn about biomanufacturing?
One of the reasons I think I was hired was because of my performance in my internship at Lone Star, in which I worked with the algae project and worked with the huge photobioreactor there as well as the smaller lab-scale photobioreactors. Also, I was at Lone Star when the existing biotech lab was transitioned to the new project lab, as Dr. Kainer explained, and I helped organize and run the lab during that time, managing the interns and developing critical thinking skills that I use now at Huntsman. I don't think you can develop those types of skills in a traditional academic setting.
During the course of the program, I took a class in bioprocessing with Mike Fino. We discussed the work being carried out by various, mostly new biofuel companies in San Diego as part of the curriculum. This piqued my interest in industrial biotechnology afresh. At about the same time, the EDGE program at MiraCosta was just starting and Mike told me about it. At the time, I had set my sights on algal biofuels and was working with one of several San Diego start-up companies.
Unfortunately, many of those companies were still in the R&D phase and were surviving on grants or private funding. This meant that once there was a shortage of funding for whatever reason, all non-PhD level staff were most likely to be laid off in an attempt to “trim the fat.” I decided to try to get involved in a company that was already in commercial operation, where my skills would be much more relevant. But that was not going to be easy either, because in order to make an impact in companies at that stage of operations I needed to have some hands-on experience with biofuel production beyond the bench scale. Consequently, I enrolled in the EDGE biofuel technician program at MiraCosta College, which I completed at the end of the summer of 2012.
At the moment, I am the operations manager, and I attribute a lot of my daily abilities and accomplishments to the knowledge and experience gained at MiraCosta. For instance, the technical knowledge on biofuel production, and in particular biodiesel production, comes in handy when making decisions on process improvement steps. Also, having hands-on experience in quality testing and Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) has helped me in providing proper guidance to my fellow workers, many of whom have little or no experience working in this relatively new field.
The other company is Aperion (Scottsdale, AZ), which has given us both moral and financial support. It has a very ambitious goal–to construct the first master-planned, truly sustainable community. The company is trying to do this in an area outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, called Rio West. The community will have to be able to produce its own energy sustainably, and it is developing solar, wind, and geothermal options, among other traditional energy-producing technologies. But to be sustainable you also have to conserve and use less energy. When Aperion heard about our algae projects through the media, it asked us to work on a problem it was having with water. In this roundtable discussion we are focusing primarily on the production of bioenergy and bioproducts, but we do not want to discount the tremendous potential that algae have in bioremediation. We have a project based on water remediation with Aperion, and it has given us a healthy donation that has allowed us to purchase the equipment we need to make this research possible. Within the last few weeks Aperion came back to us to begin work on another project involving algae to help Native American farmers in New Mexico. The company has provided more funding for us to pursue a project focusing on algae production for aquaculture and to produce cattle feed.
Huntsman is another example of our collaborations with industry, and without the industry buy-in we would not be doing what we are able to do today.