Fuel the future

Efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable medium chain length fatty acid biorefinery is promising alternative for the present production processes from vegetable oils such as coconut oil or palm kernel oil, or petrol oil. An innovative fermentation technology has been developed to meet the growing demand for sustainable biobased building blocks in the chemical industry. This fermentation technology utilises microorganisms to process organic waste into medium chain length fatty acid (Mcl-FA). Mcl-FAs are widely used in chemical industry as building blocks for polymers, paint additives, lubricant, and etc. Production of Mcl-FA through this fermentation technology is considered to be a promising alternative for the present production processes from vegetable oils such as coconut oil or palm kernel oil, or petrol oil.

Sustainable Mcl-FA biorefinery

This research project targets at designing an efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable Mcl-FA biorefinery based on this innovative fermentation technology. To achieve this target, three tasks have to be performed: To optimise the production by systematically integrating all steps involved in the technology (efficient), to save the cost by reducing the additional use of chemicals during production without compromising the product yield (cost-effective), and to improve the sustainability by evaluating the overall environmental performance (sustainable). These tasks are going to be performed in this PhD research project, and the outcome is expected to be an economically and technically feasible biorefinery that produces Mcl-FA from organic waste with the least environmental impact.