Newton Bhabha Industrial Waste: Integrated biorefinery for converting paper mill waste into chemical wealth (waste-2-wealth)
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Chemistry
Abstract
India is the fastest growing paper market in the world (6% per annum; by 2024-25 Indian demand is projected to increase to 23.50 million MT). However, alongside this trend is the huge amount of industrial waste, especially lignocellulosic material that accumulates as part of this expanding industry. This proposal addresses a number of urgent problems relevant to India, including a) a strengthening of the countries economic position through the emerging bioeconomy, b) the need to tackle major and growing environmental waste management challenges and c) addressing countrywide poverty prevalence through new employment. Our team will develop an innovative biorefinery and commercial strategy to establish a demonstrator platform for the sustainable conversion of paper mill waste into high value chemicals. This platform will be used to drive sustainable expansion through commercial inward investment. This technology will lead to reduction in industrial waste/pollution, and improve value recovery from waste in the paper and pulp industry sector. The proposal will strengthen India's economic position, address major waste challenges and tackle rural poverty. The biorefinery is built from partner expertise in i) valorisation of waste feedstock (India); ii) use of bioengineered strains for fragrance production at industrial levels, and feedstock utilisation (UK); iii) commercial expertise in this market sector (UK/India). The innovation is found in unifying existing technologies to form the biorefinery concept, enabling distributed, green, scalable and sustainable manufacture of chemicals from major paper mill waste streams. The biorefinery will drive inward investment to strengthen India's economic position, address major waste challenges and tackle poverty prevalence through job creation.
Planned Impact
This project will develop sustainable, scalable and cost-effective metabolic engineering routes to chemicals manufacture. It will do this using waste feedstocks that are widely available, both in India and in other LMICs, using metabolic engineered microbial strains. The beneficiaries of the research programme are those in the academic scientific community, especially those engaged in the bioengineering of microbial strains in the IBBE sector and scientists in the bioprocessing/fermentation sectors. Industrial colleagues developing robust hosts for industrial applications for IBBE sector applications will also benefit, especially where scale up costs and ease of process operability are major concerns. On the longer term, the chemicals manufacturing sector will benefit from the delivery of fermentation processes for products for which there are established markets and this will also have major societal benefits (wealth creation; rural employment; environmental benefits).
There are major beneficiaries in the conversion of waste streams (e.g. mill waste) to higher value products / fuels and for the remediation of other biomass (e.g. algal biomass, the control of which is a major problem for many industrial sectors). The motivation is to i) increase capacity in chemicals manufacturing supply with low carbon footprint whilst ii) provide sustainable routes to production, implemented at low capital cost and iii) deliver this vision without reliance on major transport infrastructures. This can be provided through the integrated biorefinery concept that we propose. The technology developed will therefore provide solutions to the multi-faceted challenges of future materials / chemicals supply in developing economies where the utilisation of waste streams can add significant value to manufacturing workflows.
The project will train a new generation of scientists not constrained by discipline boundaries who can bring synthetic biology approaches, bioprocessing and thermocatalytic methods of feedstock degradation together to address grand challenges relating to chemicals manufacture, strategy and implementation. These scientists will be equipped to work seamlessly across disciplines and with collaborating international centres. The project is an innovative science programme led by the economic and social needs of developing countries (in this case India), in partnership with industry, government policy makers, as well as consumers. Project scientists and associated staff will work with experts in Responsible Research Innovation based in the SYNBIOCHEM Centre and Indian NGOs / government groups to ensure that manufacturing practices are informed, ethical and that they satisfy regulatory aspects. This will require input from real-time assessment and anticipation of research and innovation trajectories, deliberation and reflection, and collaborative development.
The project maps strongly into RCUK priority challenge themes and in particular the India waste challenge call. It recognises the need to integrate approaches in biomolecular engineering into wider manufacturing programmes, which is a major driver for the burgeoning bioeconomy.
There are major beneficiaries in the conversion of waste streams (e.g. mill waste) to higher value products / fuels and for the remediation of other biomass (e.g. algal biomass, the control of which is a major problem for many industrial sectors). The motivation is to i) increase capacity in chemicals manufacturing supply with low carbon footprint whilst ii) provide sustainable routes to production, implemented at low capital cost and iii) deliver this vision without reliance on major transport infrastructures. This can be provided through the integrated biorefinery concept that we propose. The technology developed will therefore provide solutions to the multi-faceted challenges of future materials / chemicals supply in developing economies where the utilisation of waste streams can add significant value to manufacturing workflows.
The project will train a new generation of scientists not constrained by discipline boundaries who can bring synthetic biology approaches, bioprocessing and thermocatalytic methods of feedstock degradation together to address grand challenges relating to chemicals manufacture, strategy and implementation. These scientists will be equipped to work seamlessly across disciplines and with collaborating international centres. The project is an innovative science programme led by the economic and social needs of developing countries (in this case India), in partnership with industry, government policy makers, as well as consumers. Project scientists and associated staff will work with experts in Responsible Research Innovation based in the SYNBIOCHEM Centre and Indian NGOs / government groups to ensure that manufacturing practices are informed, ethical and that they satisfy regulatory aspects. This will require input from real-time assessment and anticipation of research and innovation trajectories, deliberation and reflection, and collaborative development.
The project maps strongly into RCUK priority challenge themes and in particular the India waste challenge call. It recognises the need to integrate approaches in biomolecular engineering into wider manufacturing programmes, which is a major driver for the burgeoning bioeconomy.
Publications
Banner A
(2021)
Consolidated Bioprocessing: Synthetic Biology Routes to Fuels and Fine Chemicals.
in Microorganisms
Rinaldi MA
(2022)
Alternative metabolic pathways and strategies to high-titre terpenoid production in Escherichia coli.
in Natural product reports
Rinaldi MA
(2022)
Bioproduction of Linalool From Paper Mill Waste.
in Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology
Description | This project focussed on developing a sustainable, scalable, and modularised biorefinery for the conversion of waste streams from Indian paper/pulp mills to the high value fragrance (R)-linalool and the amino acid lysine at a g/L scale. Linalool had a global consumption of 21106 MT in 2016. It is a major precursor in vitamin E synthesis and is an additive in foods and beverages, perfumes, household detergents and waxes and as a precursor in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. Lysine has a market size in animal nutrition alone of over 1.9 million MT in 2014, with a projected three million metric tonnes by 2023. This was designed to address challenges in India such as a) a strengthening of the country's economic position through the emerging bioeconomy, b) tackle major and growing environmental waste management challenges and c) addressing countrywide poverty through job creation. It utilised the expertise of the Indian partners in biomass waste conversion and pilot scale microbial processing and the strengths of the UK partners who have developed stable microbial production strains for chemical production and cellulolytic degradation pathways. During this project, the Indian partners successfully developed and optimised valorisation techniques from commercially sourced Indian paper mill paper fines to derive bio-oil, bio-char and bio-gas from lignin by hydrothermal liquefaction. This contained high value commodity chemicals, such as vanillin (anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anticonvulsant, and flavouring agent) and acetosyringone (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, anti-asthmatic drug and non-narcotic analgesic). Bio-oil preparations from paper waste showed a good antimicrobial activity. The bulk cellulose fibres further underwent enzymatic release of glucose to provide a carbon source for fermentative lysine production by Corynebacterium glutamicum. In parallel, the UK partners screened and developed a set of bacterial cellulolytic pathways for cellulose degradation to glucose. The linalool production pathway in Escherichia coli underwent further development to establish stable strains for scaled fermentation. The UK industrial partner tested the effectiveness of this strain by performing pilot scale linalool production (>200L) and purification in readiness for later commercial applications. |
Exploitation Route | Our team demonstrated pilot scale microbial linalool production and small-scale lysine production, the latter utilising a carbon source derived from paper mill waste. Due to restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter objectives of developing demonstrator pilot plants in India could not be completed. Future demonstration of pilot scale work for both products could be achieved by sourcing further funding from academic/government or industry. The demonstration of more efficient sugar release from paper mill wastewater compared to raw lignocellulose waste (crop residue or wood chippings) could stimulate further investigations into the use of paper fines as carbon sources for microorganisms. This could allow paper mills to recognise the value of this abundant waste stream, driving procedural changes towards gaining value from waste and thereby reducing the volume of waste requiring disposal. A realisation of this technology could drive further investment into developing alternative cellulolytic microbial chassis capable of degrading cellulose fibres whilst biosynthesising high value commodity chemicals. This could tip the balance towards commercial viability of bioengineered chemicals production by eliminating the need for expensive enzymatic hydrolysis pre-treatments when utilising lignocellulose waste. |
Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Agriculture Food and Drink Manufacturing including Industrial Biotechology |
URL | https://c3biotech.com/news/ |
Description | Work performed in this grant award has been translated by C3 BIOTECH Ltd and partners in commercial developments (2021-current time). In 2022, C3 BIOTECH initiated establishment of pilot plant facilities in Greater Manchester following successful scaling of a product from this grant award. The company was successful in securing capital funding from UK Government to establish pilot plant facilities for bioproduction using, in part, technology secured in the Newton Bhabha award. Scaled production at pilot scale of multiple bioproducts are underway as implementation of commercial development strategies for the technologies developed |
First Year Of Impact | 2021 |
Sector | Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology |
Impact Types | Societal |
Description | Growing cells with cellulose towards green chemical manufacturing: Impact Acceleration Account, University of Manchester |
Amount | £12,491 (GBP) |
Organisation | Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 07/2020 |
End | 01/2021 |
Title | Library of secretable cellulolytic enzymes in E. coli |
Description | Construction of a library of enzymes to fully degrade cellulose containing variable tags for directing the secretion into the culture medium. |
Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
Year Produced | 2019 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Ability to identify and construct a variety of multi-gene constructs to ultimately completely degrading cellulose in multiple microorganisms. |
Title | Stable production strain for terpene fuel (2020) |
Description | Generation of an E. coli strain containing the genes required for the full biosynthesis of a terpene fuel precursor integrated into the chromosome. |
Type Of Material | Technology assay or reagent |
Year Produced | 2020 |
Provided To Others? | No |
Impact | Increased the commercialisation potential of this strain for terpene-based fuel additive production. |
Description | Lixea biomass |
Organisation | Lixea Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | Use supplied biomass in research |
Collaborator Contribution | Provide lignocellulose for research |
Impact | ongoing collaboration |
Start Year | 2020 |
Description | W2W collaboration with Indian partners CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST |
Organisation | C3 Biotechnologies Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | This research is a collaboration between the University of Manchester, CSIR-IIP (India) and CSIR-NIIST (India) in association with industrial partners C3 Biotech (UK) and GreenTech (India). The University of Manchester has contributed research towards the grant. |
Collaborator Contribution | Both CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST have contributed research towards the grant. C3 Biotech and GreenTech are industrial collaborations that have contributed towards the potential commercialisation/IP protection of the processes and outputs gained during this collaboration. In addition, C3 Biotech have contributed research towards this research. |
Impact | This collaboration is multi-disciplinary. The University of Manchester contributes synthetic biology, molecular cloning and strain engineering techniques to generate optimised strains for chemical production from pulp and paper waste. CSIR-NIIST contributes pulp and paper pre-processing and scalable fermentation design technology to scale up microbial chemical production. CSIR-IIP contributes expertise in lignin processing to generate valuable chemicals from pulp and paper waste. C3 Biotech is contributing expertise in bioreactor design and TEA/LCA analysis of scalable processes, in addition to being the UK partner in IP protection and commercialisation for the project. GreenTech provides contacts within India to establish new collaborations with Indian companies for commercialisation of the project outcomes. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | W2W collaboration with Indian partners CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST |
Organisation | Government of India |
Department | CSIR – National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology |
Country | India |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | This research is a collaboration between the University of Manchester, CSIR-IIP (India) and CSIR-NIIST (India) in association with industrial partners C3 Biotech (UK) and GreenTech (India). The University of Manchester has contributed research towards the grant. |
Collaborator Contribution | Both CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST have contributed research towards the grant. C3 Biotech and GreenTech are industrial collaborations that have contributed towards the potential commercialisation/IP protection of the processes and outputs gained during this collaboration. In addition, C3 Biotech have contributed research towards this research. |
Impact | This collaboration is multi-disciplinary. The University of Manchester contributes synthetic biology, molecular cloning and strain engineering techniques to generate optimised strains for chemical production from pulp and paper waste. CSIR-NIIST contributes pulp and paper pre-processing and scalable fermentation design technology to scale up microbial chemical production. CSIR-IIP contributes expertise in lignin processing to generate valuable chemicals from pulp and paper waste. C3 Biotech is contributing expertise in bioreactor design and TEA/LCA analysis of scalable processes, in addition to being the UK partner in IP protection and commercialisation for the project. GreenTech provides contacts within India to establish new collaborations with Indian companies for commercialisation of the project outcomes. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | W2W collaboration with Indian partners CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST |
Organisation | Green-tech Ltd |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | This research is a collaboration between the University of Manchester, CSIR-IIP (India) and CSIR-NIIST (India) in association with industrial partners C3 Biotech (UK) and GreenTech (India). The University of Manchester has contributed research towards the grant. |
Collaborator Contribution | Both CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST have contributed research towards the grant. C3 Biotech and GreenTech are industrial collaborations that have contributed towards the potential commercialisation/IP protection of the processes and outputs gained during this collaboration. In addition, C3 Biotech have contributed research towards this research. |
Impact | This collaboration is multi-disciplinary. The University of Manchester contributes synthetic biology, molecular cloning and strain engineering techniques to generate optimised strains for chemical production from pulp and paper waste. CSIR-NIIST contributes pulp and paper pre-processing and scalable fermentation design technology to scale up microbial chemical production. CSIR-IIP contributes expertise in lignin processing to generate valuable chemicals from pulp and paper waste. C3 Biotech is contributing expertise in bioreactor design and TEA/LCA analysis of scalable processes, in addition to being the UK partner in IP protection and commercialisation for the project. GreenTech provides contacts within India to establish new collaborations with Indian companies for commercialisation of the project outcomes. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | W2W collaboration with Indian partners CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST |
Organisation | Indian Institute of Petroleum |
Country | India |
Sector | Public |
PI Contribution | This research is a collaboration between the University of Manchester, CSIR-IIP (India) and CSIR-NIIST (India) in association with industrial partners C3 Biotech (UK) and GreenTech (India). The University of Manchester has contributed research towards the grant. |
Collaborator Contribution | Both CSIR-IIP and CSIR-NIIST have contributed research towards the grant. C3 Biotech and GreenTech are industrial collaborations that have contributed towards the potential commercialisation/IP protection of the processes and outputs gained during this collaboration. In addition, C3 Biotech have contributed research towards this research. |
Impact | This collaboration is multi-disciplinary. The University of Manchester contributes synthetic biology, molecular cloning and strain engineering techniques to generate optimised strains for chemical production from pulp and paper waste. CSIR-NIIST contributes pulp and paper pre-processing and scalable fermentation design technology to scale up microbial chemical production. CSIR-IIP contributes expertise in lignin processing to generate valuable chemicals from pulp and paper waste. C3 Biotech is contributing expertise in bioreactor design and TEA/LCA analysis of scalable processes, in addition to being the UK partner in IP protection and commercialisation for the project. GreenTech provides contacts within India to establish new collaborations with Indian companies for commercialisation of the project outcomes. |
Start Year | 2018 |
Description | MIB Open Day Stands/Tours |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an open day or visit at my research institution |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Schools |
Results and Impact | At Institute Open Day members of research group presented exhibits on topics of enzyme catalysis, synthetic biology, light activated biology and 'proteins' in general. Also demonstrated use of laboratory equipment on lab-tours run for attending students. Event was well received by both students and their teachers and seemed to inspire interest in the subject. No defined impacts realised to date |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2012,2013,2014,2015,2016,2017,2018 |