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iFERMENTER - CONVERSION OF FORESTRY SUGAR RESIDUAL STREAMS TO ANTIMICROBIAL PROTEINS BY INTELLIGENT FERMENTATION

Objective

Plant dry matter, so-called lignocellulosic biomass, is the largest renewable biomass feedstock on Earth. Europe has over 14 mill tons of sugar residuals from biorefineries, which could be converted to profitable products and contribute to a sustainable bioeconomy. Unfortunately, existing biorefineries struggle with technical issues and low profitability due to the lack of adequate fermentation processes. Therefore, these sugars are either incinerated to generate energy or at best converted to ethanol (€0.6 /kg) but not to higher value chemicals.
Current concepts that aim to establish fermentation processes to convert residual sugar streams to high value products face challenges including inefficient sugar utilization by microorganisms and inhibitors in the residual streams, leading to low productivity and yields.
Our project aims to recover high value compounds from sugar residuals, and to turn fermentation processes converting these residual to antimicrobials cost effective. We will recover the high value sugar galactose (€40-200 /kg) from residual streams as part of their treatment process. By genome editing technique, we will design cell factories that consume the remaining residuals and produce nisin (€50-150 /kg), an industrially important commercial food/feed preservative. Additionally, we will develop an affordable, online feedback add-on system that will allow to intelligently change residual mixture during fermentation of these cell factories to optimize production online during the process. In a 150 L industrial bioreactor, we will demonstrate that our add-on invention iFermenter
- increases the yields of nisin by over 2 fold
- increases the pediocin production by over 50% compared to what is possible today,
- and reduce at least 20% in CO2 footprint with this process compared to existing solutions.
Thus, iFermenter will render production of high value products with residual sugar stream highly efficient and cost-effective contributing to circular economy.

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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RIA - Research and Innovation action

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-BBI-JTI-2017

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Coordinator

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 995 025,25
Address
HOGSKOLERINGEN 1
7491 TRONDHEIM
Norway

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Region
Norge Trøndelag Trøndelag
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 345 900,00

Participants (11)

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