Gentamicin Production

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Executive Summary

Recycling of agricultural wastes into value-added products offers insurmountable advantages such as economic-value enhancement and also creation of zero waste. For an agriculture-intensive country like Malaysia, the abundantly-available organic wastes such as banana stem provide an opportunity for the conversion into highly-sought compounds such as ferulic acid. Ferulic acid is well known for its anti-oxidation properties. Conventional ferulic acid production comes from several pathways such as from corn cobs as substrate via alkaline hydrolysis, Streptomyces avermitilis-treated sugar beet pulp as well as wheat bran fermented by Staphylococcus aureus. . In the current work, banana stem was employed as substrate whilst cost-free soil mixed culture was collected from banana plantation to serve as inoculum. The inoculum was mixed with substrate in an incubator shaker to allow the aerobic fermentation process followed by sample collection at every 6-hours interval for the next 72 hours. HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) analysis was performed to determine the amount of ferulic acid presence. To the best of our existing knowledge, ferulic acid from banana stem waste is the first attempt and was never reported before; hence the kinetic is not well-understood. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to determine the kinetic constant (Km and Vmax) by using Michaelis –Menten equation. From this research, kinetic constants, Km and Vmax, from Michaelis–Menten correlation using Runge-Kutta 4th method can be used for process scale up.

1. Motivation, problem statement and brief review

Previously, when logging activities or after a harvest operation from paddy or wheat farm was carried out, the residues were burnt or used as solid foods for livestock (Gil et al, 2011). This will deteriorate the surrounding environment and bring a serious impact to the health of human beings. Therefore, utilization of...

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14. United Aluminum Company of Cincinnati produces three grades (high, medium, and low) of aluminum at two mills. Each mill has a different production capacity (in tons per day) for each grade, as follows:

Mill

 

Aluminum

Grade

1

2

High

6

2

Medium

2

2

Low

4

10

The company has contracted with a manufacturing firm to supply at least 12 tons of high-grade aluminum, 8 tons of medium-grade aluminum, and 5 tons of low grade aluminum. It costs United $6000 per day to operate mill 1 and $7000 per day to operate mill 2. The company wants to know the number of days to operate each mill in order to meet the contract at the minimum cost.

Formulate a linear programming model for this problem.

16. Solve the linear programming model formulated in Problem 14 for United Aluminum Company by using the computer.

a. Identify and explain the shadow prices for each of the aluminum grade contract requirements.

b. Identify the sensitivity ranges for the objective function coefficients and the constraint quantity values.

c. Would the solution values change if the contract requirements for high-grade aluminum were increased for 12 tons to 20 tons? If yes what would the new solutions values be?

22. Solve the linear programming model developed below for the Burger Doodle restaurant by using the computer.

Biscuit

Labor (hr)

Sausage (lb)

Ham (lb)

Flour (lb)

Sausage

0.01

0.1

-

0.04

Ham

0.024

-

0.15

0.04

a. Identify and explain the shadow prices for each of the resource constraints.

b. Which of the resources constraints profit the most?

c. Identify the sensitivity ranges for the profit of a sausage biscuit and the amount of sausage available. Explain these sensitivity ranges.