Project description
From insect waste to eco-friendly bioplastics
In the rapidly expanding realm of insect production for food and feed, the Black Soldier Fly (BSF) stands out for its bio-resource recycling prowess and high nutritional content. However, the sector has largely overlooked the vast potential of chitin, a plentiful polymer found in BSF. The MSCA-funded ChitinBioPlastic project addresses this oversight. It aims to convert waste from the BSF industry, including dead flies and pupae exuviae, into valuable chitin and bioplastics. With conventional plastic pollution reaching critical levels, this innovative venture seeks to develop green techniques for chitin extraction, ensuring eco-friendly bioplastic production. By pioneering sustainable practices, ChitinBioPlastic charts a groundbreaking course in insect production, mitigating plastic pollution and fostering a greener future.
Objective
Commercial insect production for food and feed is a fast-growing industry. Among different insect species, Black Soldier Flies (BSF) show promising potential due to their efficient bioresource recycling capability and high nutritional values for animal feed applications. In addition, they are an important source of chitin, the second most abundant polymer after cellulose in the world, with diverse industrial applications. The current insect production sector has primarily overlooked the application of chitin, mainly focusing on products associated with nutritional values. However, in the future commercial insect sector will generate a lot of wastes, including dead fly and pupae exuviae. This project aims to provide industrial value to the dead fly and pupae exuviae of BSF industry into chitin and bioplastics, developing and exploiting novel, efficient, and environment-friendly approaches. This is because, from 1950-2015, the world has already generated 6.3 billion MT of plastic, and an estimated 12 billion MT of plastic is predicted to reach landfills by 2050. These plastics slowly disintegrate to generate Micro-Plastics harming life underwater and above land. Thus, we must develop bio-based plastics to replace the heavy use of harmful plastics. This project will extract the chitin from insect by-products and develop it into bioplastics. The current chitin extraction involves the usage of harsh chemicals leading to severe environmental pollution. Therefore, green techniques are needed to extract chitin from these insects. This study will refine and employ cutting edge techniques to extract chitin from BSF. The chitin produced will be suitable for developing bioplastics since the biomass used to make bioplastic will be biodegradable and is not food product. This would be the first study in the insect production sector to develop and apply a green pathway for chitin production and processing to a biodegradable bioplastic.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyentomology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processes
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterialsbioplastics
- agricultural sciencesanimal and dairy sciencedomestic animalsanimal husbandryanimal feed
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
8026 Bodo
Norway