Waste4Bio · Waste4Bio: Advancing Food Waste Utilization Through Multiplatform Biorefinery

Food waste (FW) is a significant global issue, with around one-third of all food produced wasted annually. FW biorefineries constitutes a green route to valorise the enormous untapped potential of FW via its bioconversion into marketable products and fuels in a circular bioeconomy scheme. However, to date, FW biorefineries have not reached the maturity level needed for full-scale and widespread application. To meet the European Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals, Waste4Bio project aims at engineering and validating an innovative, cost-competitive FW biorefinery for the cascade production of biohydrogen (bioH2) and biodegradable biopolymers (polyhydroxyalkanoates; PHAs). To this end, Waste4Bio will go beyond of the state-of-the-art of dark fermentation to design advanced mass transfer hydrogen-producing fermenters able to support a high density of biocatalyst and a superior bioH2 production performance. Waste4Bio will also upgrade the acidogenic gas mixture evolved by using well-engineered outdoor algal-bacterial photobioreactors to produce near-pure bioH2 and treat the carbon dioxide into algal biomass, contributing to a net-zero carbon balance for FW valorisation. In addition, the DF broth rich in short-chain carboxylic compounds will be further valorised for highly efficient PHA production with purple phototrophic bacteria (PPB). This action also aims at bringing deeper understanding of the microbiome, and its associated potential functionality and ecological interactions, involved in every fermentative bioH2 production, photosynthetic bioH2 upgrading, and PPB-based PHA production stage. Waste4Bio with transferable skills and a cross-sectoral nature will apply a cross-disciplinary approach involving bioprocess and chemical engineering, environmental biotechnology and microbiology and bioinformatics. A techno-economic model and a market-uptake roadmap will also be created to facilitate the fully exploitation of Waste4Bio.