De-centralised flower waste biorefinery: towards continuous supply of feedstock for the fine chemical industry
- Project lead
- Parimala Shivaprasad
- Institute
- University of Nottingham
Summary:
The billion-dollar flavour and fragrance industry accounts for 20% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions and changing regulations have prompted this industry to identify climate-neutral routes for manufacturing flavour and fragrance ingredients. Flowers are an abundant source of terpenes, which are highly versatile molecules that can be tailored into a range of starting materials for the fragrance, flavour and cosmetic products. This new collaboration with Unilever and the Bridge Farm Group (developed during BBNet and HVB workshops) will for the first time demonstrate the potential of flower waste as an alternative feedstock for personal and homecare product formulations. The aim of this project is to produce terpene esters from flower waste streams containing tulips, daffodils and roses using enzyme catalysis, demonstrate scale-up in a continuous reactor configuration and investigate the economic feasibility of flower waste as an alternative feedstock. Bridge Farm group (largest suppliers of ornamental flowers in the UK) produce approximately 1800 m3 of flower waste annually in the form of unharvested and unsold flowers. Unilever are aiming for a biomass-based signature fragrance for homecare products through their clean futures initiative. Hence, the project outcomes will create a new supply chain network for fragrance ingredients produced from valorising flower waste and accelerate a transition towards biobased chemical production by demonstrating enzyme catalysis at scale. The outcomes further align with the BBSRC and UK’s 2050 vision towards enabling utilisation of biomass and biotechnology to achieve sustainable manufacturing and net zero targets in the chemical industry.
This project is ongoing and an update on the outcomes and impact will be published on completion.
Academic partners: Dr Parimala Shivaprasad, University of Nottingham, Dr Ioanna Dimitriou, University of Nottingham
Industrial partners: Dr Craig Jones, Unilever R&D
