Objective
Over the past decade there has been a huge increase in consumers¿ expectation, knowledge and understanding of the quality, safety and efficacy of many products, including food, cosmetics and medicines. In particular, there has been a strong consumer preference towards products made from natural rather than synthetic sources (i.e. plant, animal or microbial sources), which is seen as a rapidly growing consumer demand for natural remedies and organic products. This has led to resurgence in the need for research into natural products and ways of efficiently producing/extracting High Value Natural Compounds (HVNCs) from materials such as plants and marine life.
HVNCs are extracted using an appropriate solvent to separate them from bulk, unwanted material and are then concentrated, purified and modified as required to provide the desired end product. Innovative new technologies and processes for more selective, sustainable and energy efficient separation of HVNCs are the scientific and engineering focus of this re search training network. Research in the European Community in this area is recognised as excellent, but suffers from fragmentation. Also, exploitation of European ideas by European industry is often criticised as lacking the dynamism of the USA and Asia n economies.
This proposal seeks to improve the knowledge supply chain through an SME-led programme of applied research to develop engineers and scientists who are academically excellent, but who thrive at the interface between fundamental research and industrial application. By combining the work at 9 partner sites we will achieve a critical mass in the natural extracts area, enabling us to exploit inter-sectorial and multi-disciplinarity synergies, and through careful selection of partners a consortium wit h an important balance between SME, commercial End-User, and University organisations has been assembled.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistry
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineeringproduct engineering
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managemententrepreneurship
- engineering and technologychemical engineeringseparation technologies
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiology
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Call for proposal
FP6-2005-MOBILITY-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
RTN - Marie Curie actions-Research Training NetworksCoordinator
LONDON
United Kingdom