From biofuels to bioplastics and biobased fine chemicals; biorefinery offers more and more renewable alternatives to fossil raw materials. But low yields and complex purification steps limit the economic profitability of industrial biotechnological production processes. The EPI-CES research project has now developed an improved process to overcome these challenges.
In EPI-CES, the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart and the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP in Leuna (both in Germany) investigated an integrated downstream process chain for microalgae ingredients, in which cell disruption, extraction and separation efficiently coincide .
Diatoms (so-called diatoms) were used. These single-celled organisms do not excrete the relevant substances, but accumulate them in the interior of the cell, requiring a process to break down the cell and fractionate the remains to extract the valuable substances. The energy-efficient pressure change technology was chosen. This process involves rapidly pressurizing and relaxing the cells, causing them to burst during the process. The ingredients are not damaged with this method and continuous process control is possible.
Cost-covering
For example, the 'cell soup' contains proteins that are interesting for food and animal feed. Laminarin is also present, which activates the immune system and could replace antibiotics in animal feed. In crop protection it could protect crops against fungal diseases instead of fungicides. Finally, there are omega-3 fatty acids, the fatty acid EPA and the anti-inflammatory and weight-reducing pigment fucoxanthin. Lamarine and fucoxanthin alone are high-quality fractions that can make the process cost-effective.
The EPI-CES initiative ran from 2018 to 2022 and was co-funded with €1,13 million by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, as part of the Biorefineries technology initiative. So far, the process has only been developed on a lab scale. However, the results are already valuable for estimating how much biomass needs to be processed for a certain yield and which purification steps are profitable. How sustainable a process in algae biotechnology ultimately is is largely determined by the cost of green energy.
Read the full article at:
https://biooekonomie.de/foerderung/foerderbeispiele/algenbiotechnologie-wie-werden-prozesse-profitabel
Source: agro-chemical.nl
