Bioconversion of waste streams to produce high-value functional chemical products: fermentation and downstream purification- BioChem

The main purpose of the project is to develop and demonstrate a waste-to-value approach to recover pure chemical products from municipal wastes and industrial residues.

The overall aim of this project is to establish a novel bio-based production platform through co-fermentation of both municipal and industrial organic waste streams to produce pure and market-ready volatile fatty acids (VFAs).

These can act as platform chemicals to replace petroleum-based products to help in the transition to a fossil-free and sustainable society.

This project will seek to translate research results into real world implementation through collaboration between academia, R&D organisations and recycling companies.

The specific purpose is to: (1) develop a biobased strategy to increase tailor-made VFA production from waste by an integrated approach of bioaugmentation and co-fermentation of municipal and organic wastes, (2) separate and purify VFA mixtures into platform chemicals and for further ammonium acetate production and as leaching agents for valuable metal recovery from waste material, (3) translate the research results to implementation through the design of an integrated system, environmental and economic evaluation as well as stakeholder’s engagement.

In this way, this project will achieve a new biobased platform to help in the transition to a sustainable society.