The third reporting period of the INCITE project has seen the completion of the engineering phase and the erection, commissioning and start-up activities of the two demo plants. These developments were supported by a set of transversal activities to extract critical transversal knowledge, quantify technico-economic, social and environmental gains and raise awareness of the project activities and more widely of enzymatic technologies.
In more details, process innovation activities in the oleochemical track have led to concluding the demonstration at laboratory scale of a solvent free enzymatic synthesis of a broad range of esters showcasing the extension and replication of the INCITE technology.
Design and engineering studies have been completed for both tracks, orders of subunits and main demo equipments have been placed and received on their respective assembly sites. The construction of the demo plants has then been completed. Commissioning and start-up of all process units have been completed and the production of targeted lead products has been achieved according to specifications. On the agrochemical track, operation of all units in continuous mode is scheduled in 2024; on the oleochemical track, technical adjustments and protocol adaptations for the operability of enzymatic operation at industrial scale have been performed and led to the production of isopropyl palmitate.
In parallel, transversal activities have taken place to support the INCITE project development and maximise impact. An environmental life assessment was performed for both tracks, identifying hotpots in the chemo-enzymatic process, together with a social life cycle assessment and recommendations for improvements and finally the main economic indicators for both tracks. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out, defining the critical values of parameters that could negatively affect the profitability of plant operations.
Activities towards the identification of horizontal knowledge resulted in a set of solutions and lessons learned from both tracks together with a detailed overview of exchange and generation of information between project partners. This material has also been the focus of vertical training activities that have been deployed through the creation and opening to the public of 10 training modules, bearing on technologies developed in INCITE. The opening of these training modules has been accompanied by the broadcast of a first series of 11 webinars, now available to the public as knowledge clips on a dedicated youtube channel together with videos relating to background and project results. Overall, almost 2300 students and industry professionals were trained throughout the project.
The INCITE project was also concluded by a project workshop at the occasion of IFIB 2023 in Firenze (Italy).