Biorefinery

Heme proteins are responsible for the meaty aroma and color-profile of meat. Additionally, the heme iron is better absorbed by the human gastrointestinal tract than the non-heme iron derived from plants. Recently, precision fermentation gained a lot of interest, since this technique enables the production of animal-like proteins to improve the profile of animal-free products. Consequently, the addition of precision fermentation derived heme proteins to plant-based products could improve their taste, appearance and nutritional value. In this context, this project aims to develop alternative downstream processing routes for the recovery of heme proteins derived from precision fermentation and research the functionality of these proteins in plant-based products.

Contact persons: Tim Rammelaere and Antoinette Kazbar
Partners: Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

The project, as part of a larger consortium of Dutch universities and industrial partners, aims to research and evaluate novel electrically powered technologies for the removal of trace elements. This involves trapping or binding the trace on or within larger particles, then separating these particles from the stream using external fields, such as magnetic or acoustic fields, and lastly recovering the particles for re-use. Success is achieved if a technology is found that bypasses solvents and is more efficient than current electrically powered downstream processes.

Contact persons: Jacques Kieffer, Iulian Boboescu and Vittorio Saggiomo 
Partners: ISPT, RUG, TUD, UT, RUG, TU/e. Nobian, Dow, Shell

The seaweed (especially red seaweed0 has been promoted as an alternative protein source for food and feed applications. However, its integration into the competitive market of alternative protein for food remains challenging. This is due to many factors, such as the variability and quality of its protein content linked to cultivation, pre-treatment conditions, and low digestibility due to the high content of anionic polysaccharides, neutral polysaccharides, phenolic compounds, and proteins attached to the cell wall. In that regard, downstream processes, namely enzyme-assisted extraction, green solvent, and alkaline extraction, have been developed to extract proteins from seaweed while avoiding these challenges. On the other hand, while focusing on increasing the extraction yield and optimizing the process parameters, the quality of the protein extract (amino acid profile and digestibility) is not always guaranteed. In addition, these extraction processes are also linked to cultivation and pre-treatment conditions that have an additional impact on protein quality. So, connecting and integrating upstream processing (cultivation) to downstream processing (pre-treatment, extraction) and product quality should be investigated further. In this proposal, cultivation strategies to achieve higher protein biomass will be adopted. The isolation of protein from harvested pre-treated (dry and wet) biomass using enzymatic, deep eutectic, and alkaline techniques will be applied and evaluated. Microscopy techniques will be used as a tool to locate proteins in biomass before and after extraction. Finally, the techno-functional properties of extracted proteins will be tackled.

Contact persons: Agusman, Agus and dr. Kazbar, Antoinette 
Partners: Hortimare, TARI, TU Delft

The BLUES project focuses on the extraction of molecules with pharmaceutical properties from marine invertebrates. The main marine invertebrate species are sea sponges and sea cucumbers. The molecules are extracted using either green conventional solvents like ethanol, or using the novel deep eutectic solvents. Techno economic analysis is then performed on the designed production processes to give insights into the economic feasibility of the designed processes.

Contact persons: Davey Essers and Antoinette Kazbar
Partners: MATIS, Univerita di Genova, Universidade do Minho, Moreforsking, OLR, UNSW Sydney and Cellex cell expansion devices

This project addresses the need for the chemical industry to replace fossil oil and gas based ‘linear carbon’ with ‘renewable circular carbon’ in the production of platform chemicals and the need for natural pigments and alternative protein sources for food. Photosynthetic cyanobacteria are promising because of their potential to accumulate high levels of the sugar-storage molecule glycogen and high levels of functional protein for food applications. Furthermore, they produce the vibrant blue pigment phycocyanin that has bioactive properties. Depending on the cyanobacteria species, the amount and characteristics of these high-value compounds differ. However, a biorefinery system needs to be developed allowing highly efficient and cost-effective processing of different types of cyanobacteria.

Contact persons: Inge Braak and Iulian Boboescu
Partners: Algreen B.V.