Pro-Enrich will develop a flexible biorefinery approach capable of processing a range of agricultural residues (rapeseed meal, olives, tomatoes and citrus fruits) in response to the increasing global demand for alternative sources of protein and phenolic product streams, tailored to the cross sectoral requirements of industry.
Pro-Enrich will optimise existing biomass fractionation technologies and validate novel extraction approaches beyond the current state of the art (from TRL2 through to TRL 4/5) to isolate and purify proteins, polyphenols, dietary fibres and pigments. The products being targeted are food ingredients, pet food, cosmetics and adhesives. These will be developed through an iterative process of feedstock mapping, laboratory process development, functionality/performance testing of samples by industry and pilot upscaling.
Pro-Enrich gathers the expertise of 16 partners from 7 countries, covering the entire biorefinery value chain and consisting of 8 SMEs, 5 large enterprises, 2 RTOs and 1 university. The project facilitates supply chain building across different sectors, including biomass production and logistics; materials handling and processing, through to end-users. The project will engage and collaborate with key industry stakeholders from farming and biomass supply, processors and brand name owners.
Pro-Enrich produces detailed life-cycle, socio-economic and safety assessments to facilitate policy and decision-making by industry and the EU, inform and guide consumer acceptance and assist with regulatory compliance.
The outcome of Pro-Enrich will have a huge economic impact on the involved partners especially the industries and generate a large number of new job positions. However, the impact goes beyond the consortium by contributing to the BBI’s strategy for zero-waste processing in the biobased products sector, by addressing technical, commercial and environmental impact across the whole supply chain.
The specific objectives of the Pro-Enrich project are to:
- Determine the components with the highest market potential from the four residue streams being investigated, as evaluated by the project industrial end user partners;
- Undertake a range of bio-refining processes that yield high quantities of high-purity functional proteins and bioactive components;
- Develop the biorefinery processes in pilot scale, advancing the best businesses cases to demonstration scale.
- Apply components isolated from the bio-refining into key market areas and demonstrate their fitness for purpose;
- Undertake a system analysis to make these processes technically and economically attractive;
- Undertake sustainability assessments of process alternatives to ensure that any new product ranges developed provide environmental benefits.
- Carry out a feasibility assessment of the Pro-Enrich business model.
