Author Description

There seems to be a general decrease in the interest level of the popular press and the population as a whole in the "new biotechnology". However, the more traditional biotechnology, that associated with the development of bioprocessing systems, has continued to progress and has now matured to the extent that process engineering applications can be seriously considered. This is certainly evident in this Fifth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals where the formal program includes papers on engineering developments and process engineering. The goal of this meeting was to bring together the various disciplines and institutions involved in developing viable, new biotechnology, primarily for the conversion of renewable resources including waste materials to fuels and chemical feedstocks. A major emphasis has been bioprocess engineering. As in past meetings in this series, applied and basic research in thermal/chemical processing and bioconversion of various types of biomass were also included as was a special topic on separations. Several discussion groups were also organized.