Job Details: Senior Engineer

Job Title Senior Engineer
Company The Carmon Group
Location Boston Area MA (US)
Date Posted 03/13/09

SUMMARY

We seek a seasoned biochemical engineer to lead our proprietary Q Microbial Fermentation Technology as part of our multi-disciplinary R&D team to develop advanced technologies for the production of biofuels. Working at laboratory and pilot scale he/she will develop, evaluate, and optimize innovative prehydrolysis activities and process designs for pretreatment of a variety of biomass feedstocks converting them to ethanol biofuels.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

•Develop and improve methods to estimate efficiency of pretreatment on biomass

•Execute experiments on small and large scale on biomass, using leading pretreatment technologies

•Establish enzymatic hydrolysis data for solids derived from pretreatments with different enzyme formulations and loadings, investigate substrate-enzyme interactions, and characterize the solids pretreated by each of the leading biomass technologies

•Study the impact of cellulase and hemicellulases of Q enzyme on the saccharification of ligno cellulosic solids prepared by various prehydolysis technologies such as (AFEX), dilute acid , lime, neutral pH, and steam explosion methods

•Conduct experiments assessing the impact of Q enzyme supplementations with different loadings on glucan and xylan digestibility of biomass

•Determine main biomass features post treatment that affect and impacts cellulase efficiency including degree of depolymerization of cellulose (DP), crystallinity index, and lignin content

•Demonstrate and validate Q microbe cellulase, β-glucosidase, and xylanase activity and enzymatic saccharification of carbohydrates in solids prepared employing pretreatment technologies

•Conduct studies on the impact of additives on saccharifcation rate and fermentation rate , for an effort to reduce enzyme loadings while achieving high conversion of soluble sugars

•Determine the impact of pretreatment on the selectivity of depolymerization of cellulose and hemi cellulose to oligomers and monomers

•Study the synergy between Q microbe’s cellulase and xylanase mode of action and impact of enzyme loadings on industrial feed stocks

•Perform mathematical modeling of pretreatment and evaluate various system configurations more suitable for Q microbe

QUALIFICATIONS EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE

•Ph.D. in chemical engineering or related scientific field with 4-8 years of related experience. A Master’s Degree and additional experience may be substituted for PhD

•Strong background in biological conversion of cellulosic biomass to fuels

•Knowledge of enzyme activity and protein assays as well as solid knowledge of enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated feed stock using leading pretreatment options

•Computer expertise in numerical methods/analysis. Technical Software: Microsoft Office, Aspen Plus, Design of Experiments (DOE) and expertise on use of statistical tools and software

•Knowledge of chemical kinetics and mass and transport phenomena and enzyme catalyzed reactions in reactors

•Demonstrated skills in using general pretreatment equipment [Lab and Large Scale] instrumentation and computer controlled applications

•Experience in mathematic modeling or process engineering calculations

•Experience in cell culture optimization, anaerobic fermentations using Clostridium cells


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