There is a lack of available technology to make small-scale power from biomass cost effectively. The proposed Hybrid Brayton cycle is an indirectly heated Brayton cycle with evaporative cooling for combined heat and power generation. It converts a direct fired microturbine to an indirectly heated power system. The Hybrid Brayton cycle offers a flexible biomass power generation platform in the 30 to 250 kWe range, achieving competitive efficiencies and advantages compared to other systems of similar power level. This cycle is designed to be implemented in remote and off-grids communities, small industries and net-zero communities, where local biomass feedstock is sustainably available. This proposed platform keeps operator qualifications to a minimum. In an effort to validate this new power cycle, a 30 kWe experimental facility was developed and initial commission phases performed. This facility purpose is to validate numerical model predictions and is used for optimization. The facility is described and results of the commissioning tests are reported with various problems encountered, solutions implemented and recommendations proposed. The thermodynamic model of the Hybrid Brayton cycle is also implemented in the MatLAB environment, incorporating experimental findings and new properties for humidified air at high temperatures. The MatLAB model confirms that an indirect fired Brayton cycle with evaporative cooling could be a viable approach for small scale distributed power generation using biomass. Additional experimental data of humidified air at elevated temperatures would provide more certainty in property predictions. The MatLAB model provides a modeling tool to allow resolving the issues identified during the commissioning of the test facility and offers alternatives to optimize various design configurations, implementing the most up to date property correlations for humidified air at elevated temperatures.

In the biopharmaceutical industry, essentially, there are three components that play the main role in producing biopharmaceutical products, the host cell, the expression vector and the bioreactor and/or production environment. To produce the highly valued and desired products, the choice of a suitable host is one of the most important aspects. The host required is not only required to produce the desired product, but also needs to demonstrate robustness in a bioreactor system. Constantly facing challenges in a bioreactor, cells often undergo apoptosis, a well-known limiting factor in biopharmaceutical production, which ultimately leads to low yield of valuable protein(s). We have genetically engineered a CHO-K1 cell line to constitutively express human insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and murine polyoma large T-antigen (PyLT-Ag) to generate Super-CHO and CHO-T respectively, two cell lines that can potentially serve different niches in the biopharmaceutical industry. In the first part of the project, we hypothesised that suspension-adapted Super-CHO and CHO-T cells are both resilient cell lines relative to the suspension-adapted CHO-K1 (designated as CHO-XL-99) when facing nutrient depletion, one of the most common problems in a bioreactor. Furthermore, in the second part of this project, the suspension-adapted CHO cell lines were also tested against a cytotoxic heavy metal, cadmium. Without the protection of the metal-resistance element, metallothionein, both Super-CHO and CHO-T cells were also challenged with cadmium to demonstrate their robustness over the parental cell line, CHO-XL-99. In the subsequent study, this project also focussed on the transfection efficiency of each parental and engineered CHO cell lines. Different strategies have been employed in the past in an attempt to improve productivity in the biopharmaceutical industry, from alterations in vector construction, improved culture condition, down to enhanced product recovery. However, the transfer and expression of the gene-of-interest (GOI) has still proven to be the limiting factor for achieving increased specific productivity. In an effort to improve transfection efficiency, strategies including cell cycle synchronisation and various transfection methods to deliver the GOI into the cells have been employed. Thus, the third part of this project has used synchronising agents in conjunction with commercially available lipid- and polymer-based reagents as delivery vehicle for the model protein, EGFP. The combination of cell synchronisation and transfection vehicle on transfection efficiency is studied here, in addition to their individual or collective effect on cell growth, apoptosis and viability. In summary, this project demonstrates the incidence of apoptosis in the cell culture induced by nutrient depletion and heavy metal, and that the use of transfection reagents solely, or in combination with synchronising agents also correlates with the increase of apoptotic indices in the cell culture. The use of the robust cell lines for transfection is an important aspect, and the balance between cell viability and the effort for augmenting transfection efficiency has to be met in order to achieve the maximum biopharmaceutical yields.

Appendix 6 on microfiche in end pocket / 256 leaves : ill., diagrs., graphs, photos ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1978

Appendix 6 on microfiche in end pocket / 256 leaves : ill., diagrs., graphs, photos ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1978

Thesis (M.S. - Hydrology and Water Resources)--University of Arizona, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-174).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Melinda K. Duncan, Dept. of Biological Sciences. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D. - Soil Water and Environmental Science)--University of Arizona. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-136).

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Department of Mechanical Engineering , 1978. / Appendix 6 on microfiche in end pocket.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Monash University, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available as pdf file on the WWW.

Thesis (M.Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-157). Also available in electronic version.