From Black Soldier Fly to Green Chitin and Bioplastics: A novel value chain within insect-based circular economy

Projektinformationen

ChitinBioPlastic

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101108572

DOI

10.3030/101108572

Das Projekt endete am 15 September 2024

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 17 Juli 2023

Startdatum 1 November 2023

Enddatum 31 Oktober 2025

Finanziert unter

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Gesamtkosten

Keine Daten

EU-Beitrag

€ 210 911,04

Koordiniert durch

NORD UNIVERSITET
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ChitinBioPlastic (From Black Soldier Fly to Green Chitin and Bioplastics: A novel value chain within insect-based circular economy)

Berichtszeitraum: 2023-11-01 bis 2025-10-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

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.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

The project terminated early and therefore no significant progresses were achieved during its implementation.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

None