Milky Way Engineering

Northeastern University Chemical Engineering Capstone 2 Group 12 - Drew McGlynn, Lukas Morgan, Josh Small, Matt Schwartz

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@NU_ChemE We have now made our (very dramatic) informercial for our Lab-Grown milk...Enjoy!
https://t.co/GJrj4CeevG

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

Hi everyone! Milky Way Engineering (group 12) is excited to share our #CHME4703Poster on a more sustainable and humane lab-grown milk. Check it out below @NU_ChemE

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@jabulencia @NU_ChemE We have a 10% purge on the splitter from our centrifuge so only 90% of the media is recycled to ensure we get rid of some spent media. We optimized this by trial and error essentially, varying the split % until we reached an acceptable purity of our protein (97%) post-DSP

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@always_sunny19 @NU_ChemE We used kinetic parameters found in the literature for pichia pastoris. Our greatest difficulty was just figuring out SuperPro!

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@NanocapTeam9 @NU_ChemE The run time on our fermenters is 16 hours, but a full production run will take about 2 weeks. The downstream processing can be done in batches so it would depend on our upstream throughput

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@danteshepherd @NU_ChemE We didn’t want to copy chic-fil-a’s marketing campaign but we think they’d be on board!

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@Profess88700345 @NU_ChemE Good question, honestly we just assumed because it’s milk it needs to be refrigerated. But because our milk wouldn’t have lactose, which is what makes milk go sour with the lactobacillus converting it to lactic acid, we may not need refrigeration!

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@imPlantNanotech @NU_ChemE 2/2
Our product may taste slightly different as it lacks lactose which is the sugar in milk. Based on our competitor’s findings and claims, the taste and texture is comparable to real dairy and better than alternatives like almond, soy, or oat milk

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@imPlantNanotech @NU_ChemE We plan to initially sell our product to coffee shops to sell our product as an alternative coffee creamer/additive, as we cannot initially enter the US dairy market competitively. We’d scale up our process from there with the revenue. (1/2)

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@PharaohFluids @NU_ChemE Hi Pharaoh Fluids! This a great and timely project for this important and growing problem. Are there any plans in place for how the removed microplastics will be properly disposed of or recycled?

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@cellulosers @NU_ChemE 2/2
so having the proteins be produced with only one genetically modified yeast would make the process less efficient.

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@cellulosers @NU_ChemE 1/2
So we have two parallel lines in order to produce casein and whey. We wanted to keep them separate since, the demands for each protein are very different (4x as much casein is needed than whey). The genetically modified yeast can only efficiently produce one type of protein,

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@BooZLD_4703 @NU_ChemE It’s possible there could be a difference in taste as lactose is a sugar. We tried ice cream made with Perfect Day’s proteins and there was a small difference but it could be b/c their ice cream making process. There’s no real way to know without a real product!

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@WillitsLab @NU_ChemE Our goal is to provide a food product that is nearly indistinguishable from traditional cows milk. We believe that this will make it easy for consumers to switch to a more sustainable alternative to cows’ milk without having to compromise taste and usability in existing recipes!

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@CHME4703GROUP20 @NU_ChemE Hi! Really amazing idea to help clean up our oceans! I was wondering how you plan to recover these plastics from the oceans and what energy and monetary costs may be involved with that; additionally what do you plan to do with the plastics that can't be burned?

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@BooZLD_4703 @NU_ChemE Hi BooZLD, this is a great idea! I love that this will provide a huge reduction in water consumption. What I was wondering is what is the longevity of this filter coating, and do you think treating this quantity of wastewater will affect the coating's longevity?

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@PyroCycleNEU @NU_ChemE Hi Andrew! Our product will have similar protein and calcium compositions as bovine milk, but there will be no lactose (sugar) and we are using plant-based oils, like coconut oil for the fat content of milk

[Milky Way Engineering @MilkyWayChemE]

@donepegel @NU_ChemE Good question! Pichia is widely used in the biotech industry because of its ability to secrete recombinant proteins efficiently and scalability. Our competitors use micro-fungi, so we could use that as well, like Aspergillus fungus