Fabrizio Di Caprio ha il piacere di invitarvi al seminario:
Plant Growth for Space for Health Nutrition
di Volker Hessel, School of Chemical Engineering, the University of Adelaide, Australia
Il seminario si terrà giovedì 19 marzo p.v. alle ore 15.00 e potrà essere seguito unicamente da remoto al link.
Abstract
Space exploration is not only about spacecraft, energy, and habitats. Humans must have all what they need for survival and, moreover, feel well in space during their voyages, when facing the extreme conditions. Space food through grown plants for space is most crucial for human space exploration.
Plants (for space) can also be reprogrammed to act as ‘biomanufactories’, producing medicines and health supplements. Those can be extracted from the plants by means of solvent extraction, using continuous-flow chemistry as frontier approach. This can be assisted by plasma, which is known to be capable to break cell walls to facilitate access to their internal value materials. Examples for solvent extraction for bio-resourcing quercetin, beta carotene, and p-phycocyanin will be shown. The role of solvent extraction of health nutrients will be outlined as one step within circular plant growth in space, and what other steps need to be taken. The health nutrients are formulated to space medicines (tablets, nanoemulsions, nanoemulgel), and their stability under microgravity has been investigated (simulations, cosmic-ray exposure on Earth, sounding rocket flight, ISS experiment). A life cycle assessment (LCA) study has been conducted to decipher the environmental impact of plants grown for space (vertical/indoor farming) and the subsequent health nutrient solvent extraction. Key sustainability levers will be determined for the system and its two process steps. As an outlook, new kinds of space foods (cheese, snack, steak) will be presented and how digital twins can aid to automation and decision-making of plant growth for space.
Volker Hessel, School of Chemical Engineering, the University of Adelaide, Australia
Prof. Volker Hessel studied chemistry at Mainz University/D. 1994: Institut für Mikrotechnik Mainz/Germany (Director R&D); 2005: Professor Eindhoven University of Technology/NL; 2018: Deputy Dean (Research), Professor University of Adelaide, Australia; 2019: part-time professor University of Warwick/UK.
He is author of 807 peer-reviewed publications (h-index: 92; ca. 39,000 citations). He received the AIChE Excellence in Process Development Research Award, IUPAC ThalesNano Prize in Flow Chemistry. He is program lead in the ARC Centre of Excellence Plants for Space (P4S) and is Research Director of the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources. He received several EU’s research excellence grants (ERC Advanced/Proof of Concept/Synergy, FET OPEN). He is a member on the College of Experts for the National Research Foundation (NRF) in Singapore within the Prime Minister’s Office.