description
- Within the FP7 PEOPLE project (Blue4Glue), Fraunhofer Institute (IFAM) and Procter and Gamble discovered a (PPO based) enzymatic process used by marine-organisms, which “produce” polymers in a much simpler way (less process steps) than industry does in classical chemistry. BIO-MIMETIC aims to transfer this new scientific knowledge into a blueprint for a novel (pre-)industrial enzymatic-based bio-polymerization process. It involves research partners (IFAM and UNITOV) with experience in enzymatic transformation and bio-based synthetic polymers, as well as expert SMEs such as Dyadic (enzymes), CIMV (biomass transformation into bio-chemistry) and CULGI (computational modeling of bio-chemical processes) to develop the process that firstly transforms biomass (lignin) into new bio-based polymers (pseudo peptides). These will used to create respectively: 1) Bioconjugated copolymers, that will be tested in detergents (by P&G) 2) Bio-cross-linked adhesive gels, to be experimented in antiageing cosmetics and in bio-textiles preparation (by an SME cosmetic producer MAVI). Potential environmental benefits are over 124 kton/yr less toxic solvents to produce chemicals, over 1 Billion kWh of energy savings (room temperature process) and a drastically reduced CO2 footprint i.e. replace 8000 Mtons of petrochemical based deposition aides and in the future substitute a large amount of phenol and phenolic derivatives, which are used to produce chemical intermediates for a myriad of applications. BIO-MIMETIC will carry out LCA and LCC (cost) assessments over the value chain as input to business plan and will use a new SME LCA tool (cCALC) to develop an LCA showcase, which will come available for SMEs. The cCALC tool and showcase will be freely downloadable as part of the exploitation plan targeted at the market uptake of project results in the emerging European market of bio-based products, projected to grow towards 250 billion Euro by 2020.