Valorisation of by-products of the sugar industry for the production of bioplastics

The European sugar industry is facing challenging times as the protecting quota management is coming to an end in September 2017. In order to stay competitive, the corporative actors have to move towards more innovative business models. In the project ValorPlast, the valorisation of accruing but underutilized industrial by-products (desugared molasses and sugar beet pulp) is envisaged. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) were identified as the optimal product from the two by-product streams. Due to their properties, these bio-based and biodegradable polymers are a promising material with possible applications in the packaging sector, as disposable consumer items and for medical-technology products. They are currently limited by their price, since their production is based on the fermentation of refined sugars. The utilization of sugar-industry by-products for PHA-production is expected to have mutual benefits: increasing the value creation of the by-products and reducing the price of the product PHA. In the project, microbial strains are screened for an optimal utilization of nutrients and the fermentations are optimized for high volumetric productivities. Besides the concomitant PHA-analytics, analysing fermentation process and physico-chemical polymer characteristics, test specimens will be produced from the polymers. These test specimens are used for analysing the properties relevant for the polymer processing and defining possible fields of application. The process development is rounded off by a holistic process evaluation, integrating the technical results into an economic feasibility study.