Agri-Food waste as resource for green chemicals

PERCAL will exploit Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) as feedstock to develop intermediate chemical products at high yield and low impurity level with huge industrial interest. These will be complementary to the bioethanol (current PERSEO technology), to achieve a cascade valorisation of the MSW components, i.e.:

• Lactic acid (LA) to produce: 1) Eco-friendly ethyl lactate solvents by reactive distillation from lactic acid & bio-ethanol to be used in cleaning products and inks and 2) hot-melt adhesives for cardboard and other non-food applications in combination with maleic anhydride by reactive extrusion.

• Succinic acid (SA) as an intermediate building blocks to production of polyols for the polyurethane industry.

• Biosurfactants by chemical and/or microbiological modification of protein and lipid fraction from remaining fraction of MSW fermentation