image: Single-production and extraction (top) vs multi-product biorefinery (bottom)
Credit: European Science Communication Institute gGmbH
With food systems under pressure from climate change, geopolitical instability, and supply chain vulnerabilities, the EU is driving innovation toward more sustainable, resilient, and local production models. Microalgae have emerged as a promising resource for producing ingredients across food, feed, and other consumer goods.
“Algae play a key role in advancing a bio-based circular economy. They provide sustainable alternatives for producing food, feed, and bio-based chemicals for example, while helping to reduce land-use pressure and tackle global challenges, such as climate change, ultimately contributing to the EU’s sustainable growth and competitiveness,” says Monica Padella, a project officer at the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), which funds projects aimed at making Europe’s industries circular and bio-based.
Despite technical advances, the growing microalgae industry in Europe mostly relies on freshwater, added nutrients, and limited product output per biomass. These constraints keep costs high and limit the wider adoption of microalgae-based alternatives to conventional products.
To overcome these challenges, academic and industry experts co-created the research project ALLIANCE to produce ‘more with less’. The CBE JU-funded project started in September.
“The name ALLIANCE is not just our project’s acronym, but our spirit. It represents our systemic and collaborative approach,” says project coordinator Iago Teles from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
With an interdisciplinary and joint approach, the ALLIANCE partners aim to develop optimised multi-product biorefineries for the microalgae Spirulina, Galdieria, Chlorella and Nannochloropsis, to convert single algae biomasses into multiple products and increase the utilisation efficiency of algae biomass.
“A microalgae multi-product biorefinery is a known but difficult concept to realise,” says Iago Teles. “Our biggest strength is the broad ground of expertise, knowledge, applications and products we cover, from food, to feed, and biobased chemicals.”
The goal is to develop ingredients for foods, beverages, aquaculture feed, cell growth media for lab-cultured meat, and biological pest control from microalgae within four years.
To further maximise resource efficiency in the manufacture of these products, the ALLIANCE partners are also optimising microalgae cultivation. They develop circular production models, following the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover”- 4Rs principle to:
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Reduce the need to add new nutrients to microalgae production by automated production and adjusting culture media
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Reuse output-water from previous microalgae production cycles or from the brewery, food processing, hydroponic agriculture and aquaculture industries
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Recycle and recover nutrients present in industrial output-waters as input nutrients for microalgae cultivation
“ALLIANCE was designed following a value-chain approach, in which all our 19 partners contribute in a unique way to bring 4 different production pipelines, 19 ingredients, and 12 product prototypes into reality. The field of microalgal biotechnology needs such showcases to demonstrate its contribution to a transition to a circular and biobased industry,” explains Prof. Maria Barbosa from Wageningen University and scientific coordinator of the project.
From establishing multi-product biorefineries, to improving water reuse and nutrient recycling, the experts behind ALLIANCE will optimise every step of the microalgae value chain. This will maximise resource usage and minimise waste generation. With lower costs for both consumers and the environment, the ALLIANCE partners will make sustainable microalgae-based products more affordable and more widely accessible.