PERCAL: Chemical building blocks from versatile MSW biorefinery
PERCAL project will exploit Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) as feedstock to develop intermediate chemical products with huge industrial interest. These intermediate chemicals, lactic acid (LA), succinic acid (SA), and biosurfactants, will be complementary to the bioethanol currently produced with PERSEO technology to achieve a cascade valorization of the MSW.
The intermediate products, bioethanol, lactic acid and succinic acid will be produced by fermentation from the hydrolysates obtained from the organic fraction of the MSW. Whereas the biosurfactants will be obtained by chemical and/or microbiological modification of protein and lipid fraction from remaining fraction of MSW after fermentation.
Those intermediate products will be used to develop PERCAL’s final products:
- Lactic acid and bio-ethanol will be used to obtain eco-friendly ethyl lactate solvents by reactive distillation, to be used in cleaning products and printing inks.
- Lactic acid will be also used to obtain first lactide and then poly lactide acid (PLA), and finally hot-melt adhesives for cardboard and other non-food applications by grafting the PLA and PLA-copolymers with maleic anhydride by reactive extrusion.
- Succinic acid (SA) will be used as building block in the production of polyols for the polyurethane industry.
- The Biosurfactants will be used in the formulation of standard detergents to substitute conventional surfactants.
PERCAL processes and products are summarized in Figure 1. and in Figure 2, PERCAL products and partners involved in their production are related for additional clarification.
Great progresses of the intermediate products have been achieved.
Lactic acid, an intermediate product in the project, can now be produced from organic municipal solid waste streams feedstocks in at laboratory scale. Also suitable raw material will be applied for lactic acid production via simultaneous saccharification and fermentation approaches using newly isolated strains. The centrifuged samples achieved high lactic acid purity. Moreover, preliminary screening in the microplates for lactic acid fermentation of new strains has been successfully carried out.
YPAREX has joined the consortium bringing expertise in extrudable adhesive resins in multilayer applications. Yparex® is a product family of The Compound Company. The Yparex® portfolio consists of a full range of high-quality, high-tech tie-layer resins, coupling agents, and compatibilisers, that meet the demanding needs of customers in a broad range of application areas.
Progresses of final products have been made.
The characterisation analysis done for the valorisation of fermentation by-products provides a wide overview about their main parts. They have been focused on the protein and lipid fractions since both are the main precursors for biosurfactants production.
Lab tests to produce and purify lactide from lactic acid have been carried out as well as tests on productions of PLA and PLA-copolymers by reactive extrusion in AIMPLAS, where PLA with molecular weight up to 250kDa was obtained.