Sustainable use of marine resources for high value end products: A case study of residues from shellfish

To not jeopardize the ocean’s renewable, but limited, supply of biological resources, it is critical that these are exploited in an efficient and sustainable manner.

Today, the harvested biomass waste is either dumped into the ocean, destructed or converted into low-value products such as feed or biogas.

It is however desirable to make use of as much as possible of the biomass and convert residual streams to high-value products.

The key to make use of and refine as much as possible of the biomass, including unexploited residual streams, is the biorefinery.As a case study, we will investigate the valorisation potential of shrimp shells.

The treatment of shrimp shells in Sweden results in costs that instead could be converted into revenues via the biorefinery process.

The shell contains several valuable components, with chitin - the second most abundant and most unexploited biopolymer - displaying the highest valorisation potential for especially textiles and MedTech.

The purpose of the project is to develop an efficient biorefinery process that, by extension, can be implemented for other marine biomasses and residual streams such as fish waste, other shellfish, kelp, tunicates etc.

By connecting actors from industry and public sector in new value chains, investigate the waste valorisation process in terms of sustainability, scale-up and techno-economics, the vision is that in 5-10-years, marine residual streams are not viewed as waste but rather as valuable raw materials.