Bioprocessing Pilot Plant

University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
What the facility does

Identification, extraction, and isolation of natural products from various plant materials

Areas of expertise

The pilot plant offers fractionation and separation tools that are unique in western Canada for production of natural plant products — critically important equipment for assisting firms in the bioprocessing industry to design new technologies or improve upon old ones. While teaching undergraduate and graduate students is a key activity, co-operative research and development with industry partners is part of the facility’s mandate. Research conducted in the pilot plant can be taken directly to industry for commercialization. With its “industrial scale-up” tools, the pilot plant is the ideal facility from which many areas of crop utilization and pharmaceutical research can be supported. A key advantage of the facility is that it can operate under extreme processing conditions, enabling extractions in the presence of strong acids, strong bases, high temperatures, and high pressures. Extracted materials can also be concentrated prior to purification. Potentially useful applications are in areas as diverse as foods, biofuels, new drugs, vaccines, and nanomaterials.

Research services

Food and feed processing, analysis

Sectors of application
  • Agriculture, animal science and food
  • Education
  • Energy
  • Life sciences, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment
  • Manufacturing and processing
Equipment
Air cleaner
Drum dryer
Freeze dryer
Frymaster oil filter
High-pressure reactor
KARR ®  column
Molecular distillation
Oil expeller
One-litre high-pressure, high-temperature reactor
Rotary evaporator system, 20L
Soxhlet Extractor 12L
Spinning-band distillation system
Spray dryer
Thin-film evaporator
Tubular membrane
Vibratory screener
Walk-in cooler
Walk-in fume hood
  • Green Centre of Canada
  • Linnaeus Plant Sciences Inc.
  • Blue Goose Biorefineries Inc.
  • Prairie Tide Diversified Inc.
  • Bioriginal Food Science Corporation
  • Milligan Biofuels Inc.
  • POS Bio-Sciences
  • Bio Processing Centre
  • Contango Strategies Ltd.
  • Pound-Maker
  • Artisan Industries Inc.
  • Pope Scientific Inc.
  • Semba Biosciences Inc
  • Biolin Research Incorporated
Title URL
Virtual tour of the Bioprocessing Pilot Plant http://agbio.usask.ca/research/centres-and-facilities/ag6e64/index.php